David Yelland @davidyelland on Twitter: "Britain is at peak tabloid. We have a tabloid Prime Minister rolling out tabloid policies for tabloid editors - who, by the by, never hired him back in the day because Rupert Murdoch’s @thetimes fired him for making stuff up!"
Channel 4 head of news Dorothy Byrne, giving the MacTaggart lecture: “Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn are cowards … If they really believe in the policies they promote, they should come on to television to explain them, to allow them to be scrutinised and to justify them.”
Polly Toynbee in the Guardian: "The Sunday Times is a Brexit-backing Murdoch paper, yet editors considered it a duty to splash on this doomsday document supplemented with page after page of hair-raising warnings. The Brexit-backing Mail published the “Secret dossier’s 14 claims of chaos” in similarly startling detail. This may mark an earthquake moment, when some sense of imminent national meltdown drove these media organisations to warn their readers of no-deal reality before it’s too late. If you want a conspiracy theory with an optimistic twist, might they be terrifying their Brexit readers to soften them up for a Johnson climbdown?"
Mark Sweetwood, managing editor of the Ohio-based Vindicator newspaper which is closing after 150 years, as reported by the Guardian: “You still have neighbourhoods, where nice little old ladies live, where their kids all moved away to get jobs, [their] husbands died, but the women no longer know each other or the neighbours very well – or sometimes there’s no neighbours. And I’ve had so many of them call me and use this exact line – they say: ‘The Vindicator is my only friend'. I’ve heard that over, and over, and over again, and it haunts me.”
Owen Jones in the Guardian after he and a group of friends were victims of a violent late night attack: “We all know who the hate preachers are: one of them is the most powerful man on earth, the occupant of the White House. But there are also multiple politicians and people in the mainstream media who deliberately stoke tensions, who demonise minorities and who demonise the left.”
Danny Horan, head of factual at Channel 4, on its new three-part documentary series The World According to Paul Dacre, as quoted by the Sunday Times [£]: “Everything we thought we knew is about to be turned on its head.”
Carole Cadwalladr @carolecadwalla on Twitter: " 'Aaron Banks is such a colossal ballbag' 'Enough is enough' & 10,318 other reasons why people have donated to the crowdfunder...now at a staggering £276k. THANK YOU. Genuinely moved & gobsmacked. And very much hoping Banks reads the comments..."
Private Eye Magazine @PrivateEyeNews on Twitter: "In further 'death of print journalism' news, Private Eye's ABC sales figures for the first half of this year were 233,565. Thanks to everyone who bought a copy!"
Elton John @eltonofficial on Twitter: "Prince Harry’s Mother, Diana Princess Of Wales was one of my dearest friends. I feel a profound sense of obligation to protect Harry and his family from the unnecessary press intrusion that contributed to Diana’s untimely death."
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