Media Quotes of the Week: From President-elect Trump continues his war on media to President Obama on the dangers created by 'fake news'

New York Post on Trump's media summit with network chiefs: "Donald Trump scolded media big shots during an off-the-record Trump Tower sitdown on Monday, sources told The Post.'It was like a f–ing firing squad,' one source said of the encounter. Trump started with [CNN chief] Jeff Zucker and said ‘I hate your network, everyone at CNN is a liar and you should be ashamed,’ the source said."

Jon Snow ‏@jonsnowC4 on Twitter: "Hard to imagine in the Western world, media bosses being summoned and abused in such a way: Though Idi Amin once did it to me in 1977."

Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior aide to Barack Obama, quoted by the Guardian: “If your media outlet is focused on Trump v Hamilton instead of Trump’s $25m fraud settlement, you are a sad pawn in Trump’s game.”

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump on Twitter: "Prior to the election it was well known that I have interests in properties all over the world. Only the crooked media makes this a big deal!"

Donald Trump's chief strategist Steve Bannon, interviewed by Michael Woolf in the Hollywood Reporter: "The media bubble is the ultimate symbol of what's wrong with this country. It's just a circle of people talking to themselves who have no f—ing idea what's going on. If The New York Times didn't exist, CNN and MSNBC would be a test pattern. The Huffington Post and everything else is predicated on The New York Times. It's a closed circle of information from which Hillary Clinton got all her information — and her confidence. That was our opening."

Bannon on the Murdochs: "They got it more wrong than anybody, Rupert is a globalist and never understood Trump. To him, Trump is a radical."

CNN's Christiane Amanpour, speaking in New York after accepting the Committee to Project Journalists' Burton Benjamin Memorial Award: "I never in a million years thought I would be up here on stage appealing for the freedom and safety of American journalists at home."

AA Gill in the Sunday Times Magazine [£]: "I’ve got cancer. Sorry to drop that onto the breakfast table apropos of nothing at all. Apropos and cancer are rarely found in the same sentence. I wasn’t going to mention it, the way you don’t. In truth, I’ve got an embarrassment of cancer, the full English. There is barely a morsel of offal not included. I have a trucker’s gut-buster, gimpy, malevolent, meaty malignancy."

The NUJ in a statement on the Investigatory Powers Bill: "The bill is an attack on democracy and on the public’s right to know and it enables unjustified, secret, state interference in the press. The government has argued the bill is about dealing with national security and serious crime but what they have actually done is use terrorism as an excuse to give themselves new powers to spy on journalists.

 Motion passed by City University's Students' Union:

This Union Resolves:

1. That there is no place for the Sun, Daily Mail or Express (In their current form) on City, University of London campuses or properties.

2. To promote, amongst City students, the active pressuring of the aforementioned media outlets to cease to fuel fascism, racial tension and hatred in society.

3. To unite with other student bodies, community organisations, and businesses, to bring about a tangible change in the way the UK’s media operate.

4. To use the University’s industry contacts to reach out to employees and shareholders of the media outlets in question.

5. To provide the resources and meeting space needed to organise direct action, online and social media campaigns.

City journalism student Jack Fenwick on The Huffington Post: "Add in the fact that the word fascism was spelt incorrectly in the title of the motion and you’re left with a scene from a dark sitcom. Twitter has today been awash with high-profile journalists deriding this horrible decision. But they must understand that this terrible, terrible SU does not represent the thousands of liberal, intelligent minds that are today embarrassed by a decision that has been made on their behalf. To all students in the country who feel let down by a culture of censorship and anti-free speech within our elected student officials and activists, the time has come for change. Let’s not let them get away with it any longer."

Harriet Marsden in the Independent: "One of the first things I learnt at City is that the Sun and the Daily Mail are the two most widely-read newspapers in the country.  This means that students voted to ban the news publications that most of their country is reading, even while there are those studying at the university who are ostensibly learning how to produce news for their country. Some students are even taught by professors who have worked for these papers. They voted in the full knowledge that many City graduates will go on to work for those papers, and even aspire to do so."

Barack Obama on fake news, as reported by Tech Crunch: "Because in an age where there’s so much active misinformation, and it’s packaged very well, and it looks the same when you see it on a Facebook page or you turn on your television, where some overzealousness on the part of a U.S. official is equated with constant and severe repression elsewhere, if everything seems to be the same and no distinctions are made, then we won’t know what to protect. We won’t know what to fight for. And we can lose so much of what we’ve gained in terms of the kind of democratic freedoms and market-based economies and prosperity that we’ve come to take for granted."

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Media Quotes of the Week: From journalists can choose to be despicable or noble, shallow or profound and why a free press is like a sausage

Chinese journalist Yang Jisheng, who was awarded the Louis M. Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism by the Nieman Fellows at Harvard but not allowed to leave China to collect it in person, in a speech quoted in the New York Times: "I fervently love the profession of journalism. ... This is a profession that is despicable and noble, banal and sacred, shallow and profound, all depending on the conscience, character and values of the individual journalist. The truly professional journalist will choose the noble, sacred, profound and perilous, and remain aloof from the despicable, mundane, shallow and comfortable."

Michelle Stanistreet, NUJ general secretary, after it was announced 100 editorial jobs are to go at the Guardian Media Group: "This is a major blow for the staff of the Guardian and Observer and for journalism as a whole. We will oppose any compulsory redundancies. This news together with the loss of jobs as the Independent newspapers fold presents a very worrying situation for the future of newspapers."

The Times [£] in a leader on council newspapers: "Nine councils, including four London Labour strongholds, are still publishing fortnightly or monthly titles. The law lets them publish four times a year at most. They are calculating accurately and cynically that the government does not want the expense of taking them to court. It is time it made an example of them in the interests of democracy and free speech."

Ian Burrell in the Independent on the relations between the press and the Royals: "There are signs that the public – more than ever drawn to noisy extremes – is a bit bored of a princess who is elegant but reticent and a prince who thinks he deserves the life of a Norfolk squire. They will need to be seen to match the work rate of William’s grandparents if they are to be considered global ambassadors worthy of their publicly funded lifestyles. The Firm’s fortunes, and the quality of its press, will briefly revive in April for the Queen’s 90th birthday. After that, the Royals and their once-faithful chroniclers need to patch up their differences, or be left without a purpose."

Tom Richmond, comment editor of the Yorkshire Post, on why the paper turned down a by-lined piece by David Cameron saying how much he loved Yorkshire and the Humber in support of English Tourism Week: "The Prime Minister’s piece began with the words 'I love Yorkshire & the Humber' and was designed to highlight some of this region’s attractions and why this is the UK’s premier visitor destination...And then the insincere – some would say sham – nature of this media operation became clear. The Herald, Plymouth’s newspaper, published a piece from Mr Cameron which began with the words 'I love Cornwall and Isles of Scilly'. It did not end here. The Newcastle Chronicle carried a piece that started like this: 'I love Northumberland.' And the same in the Lincolnshire Echo: 'I love Lincolnshire'.”

Alastair Campbell in the Observer on the EU debate: "More than in any such debate I can remember, large chunks of the press have totally given up on properly informing the public. The Mail, Sun, Express and Star in particular, and to a lesser extent the Telegraph and, on a bad day, The Times, are becoming propaganda sheets for one side of the argument."

Student journalist Rebecca Pinnington, quoted by the Independent,  after being threatened with being dismissed from University College London for obtaining classified forecasts showing that the university expected to generate increased income from student accommodation: “I felt intimidated, anxious and scared. As a student journalist I felt sad because this was information that was interesting and integral to student life, but it was made very clear that if I were to publish anything more I could lose my degree.”

Sun editor Tony Gallagher ‏@tonygallagher on Twitter: "Disgraceful behaviour from UCL." 

Brian Flynn, who has taken redundancy after 20 years at the Sun, quoted by Press Gazette: “Genuinely supporting a free press is like being a meat eater having to deal with how a sausage is made. You'd prefer not to think about it, and it probably tastes better if you don't, but whether you like it or not you can't have the product without the process."

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Media Quotes of the Week: From police must understand journalists are not criminals to why the Daily Mail backed release of Guantanamo prisoner

Bob Satchwell, executive director of the Society of Editors on the draft Investigatory Powers Bill: “This does not appear to be much of an improvement on the interim measures that were put in place after the RIPA scandal. The police need to understand that journalists are not criminals and that they need to think very carefully before they do anything to search their records. Accessing journalists’ call records should be a rare exception for police rather that the rule it seems to have become in recent years. There also needs to be a clear rule that media organisations get fair warning so that they can challenge any requests if required.”

David Davis in the Mail on Sunday on Freedom of Information: "Government already holds all the cards. As it stands they use every trick to avoid disclosing information, even resorting to writing comments on post-it notes, so they can be removed before documentation is made public. They should not be allowed to take away one of the few defences the public has for discovering and preventing incompetence, corruption and misconduct amongst the most powerful people in the land."

The Telegraph in a leader defending Freedom of Information: "Ultimately, easy access to political information will breed a culture change. If councils know that the public are watching their spending then they will spend less, and publish full accounts that show how well they are behaving. If politicians understand that mistakes, disasters and backfiring initiatives are likely to wind up on a front page then they will be quick to correct errors, or be honest about what went wrong. If politicians recognise this change and embrace it, they can make it work for them. Transparency will help re-establish trust in British politics."

Colin Myler, interviewed in the Guardian: “We really do beat the crap out of each other too much as an industry. We’re not very good at talking each other up. How many times can people write about the decline in circulation? It’s been in decline for 50 years! The Buzzfeeds of this world have realised that piggybacking off good journalism is going be their legacy. And yet we are the founders of it, and we’re so negative.”

Paul Hayward in the Telegraph on the way sport helped him as he was treated for cancer: "Sport is my living, and a passion, too. But I understand it better now, nearly 30 years into the job. Much of the best sports writing is about the life stories that underpin the winning and losing. ‘Adversity overcome’ is a default mode for reporting and broadcasting. A corollary is that sport can help people in the most profound ways, on the field and up in the stands. It can help make sense of life and connect people in difficulty to a world they have fallen out of and to which they fear they may never return."

Jurgen Kloop on Jose Mourhino, as reported by the BBC: "I am full of respect for his work. I think if you are not a journalist or a referee he is a nice guy."

The BBC after police used special counter-terrorism powers to seize a laptop computer belonging to Newsnight reporter Secunder Kermani: “The BBC does everything it can to protect its reporters’ communication and materials and sought independent expert legal advice in the case of Secunder Kermani. It did not resist Thames Valley’s application for an order under the Terrorism Act in court because the Act does not afford grounds under which it could be opposed. It is troubling that this legislation does not provide the opportunity for the media to mount a freedom of speech defence.”

Nick Cohen in the Observer: "There are many long-established institutions we could live without. If the Times or the Home Office were to vanish tomorrow, we would survive. For all its glaring faults, the majority of people know that a diminished BBC, like a diminished NHS, would diminish them. The majority of people don’t set policy, however. In times of crisis, the activists with simple, sweeping solutions take over. Whether they are English nationalists, who want independence from Brussels, Scottish nationalists, who want independence from London, rightwingers, who hate the public sector or leftwingers who hate liberal freedoms, they all want to see the BBC beaten into submission."

The Times [£] in a leader after the conviction of Mark Dorling was referred to the Court of Appeal following a Times investigation: "The initial verdict will in due course be examined by the appropriate judicial authority. Whatever the appellate court decides, this outcome is as it should be in a functioning democracy. As and when the formal, constitutionally orthodox and — some might argue — more respectable branches of the state fall short, the fourth estate has a duty to step in."

Alan Bennett, interviewed in the Guardian: “The lies on the front page of the Mail are so vulgar and glaring. Occasionally people say they like my work and then I see they have a copy of the Mail, and you think, ‘Well, how can you?’”

The Daily Mail in a leader: "This paper is proud of the leading role we played in securing the return home of the last British resident in Guantanamo Bay after his 14 years’ captivity. For the release of Shaker Aamer begins what we hope will be the end of a truly shameful period in our history, when a Labour Government colluded with the Americans in torturing suspects and incarcerating them without trial, in inhuman conditions, for years on end. Yes, many have asked why a paper that abhors Islamist terrorism has campaigned so tenaciously to free a man suspected of close links with Osama bin Laden. Our answer is simple. Though we hold no brief for Mr Aamer, who may indeed have been an enemy of the West (and could still be), we believe with a burning passion in justice and the rule of law."

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