Media Quotes of the Week: From Corbyn tells NUJ he wants a Leveson-style press regulator to being a newspaper reporter is ranked the worst job in 2016

Jeremy Corbyn in a message to the NUJ annual conference: "The government claims to support a free press. But the growing concentration of media ownership is a real threat to our democracy. Even after the phone-hacking scandal we still lack a properly independent press regulator as proposed by Lord Justice Leveson.”

Lord Black, speaking at the Commonwealth Journalists' Association conference: “The newspaper industry in my country is vigorously and robustly opposed to this system of state-backed regulation, which we believe is an unacceptable incursion into press freedom. And not one newspaper has agreed to sign up to it. For us, it has brought shame on a country that many journalists elsewhere in the world struggling against censorship and intimidation had been accustomed to regarding as a beacon of free speech."

The Daily Mail investigation into would be press regulator Impress: "This is the story of how a well-connected Left-wing activist financed by a vengeful millionaire tycoon came to be on the verge of triggering the most punitive anti-Press laws enforced outside a dictatorship."

John Whittingdale in the House of Commons, as reported by the BBC: "Having had my faith perhaps tested to the utmost I still believe that press freedom is a vitally important component of a free society and we should tread very carefully."

Bob Satchel, executive director of the Society of Editors,  in a letter to the Guardian: "If the press is to be truly free it should be free with neither carrot nor stick, to join or not join the royal charter system, join or not join the new Independent Press Standards Organisation or not to join any system at all – as the Guardian so chooses."

Lord Justice Jackson during the Court of Appeal judgment in favour of the Sun on Sunday in the celebrity threesome privacy case: "Whether or not the court grants the injunction, it is inevitable that the two children will in due course learn about these matters. Much of the harm which the injunction was intended to prevent has already occurred."

Desmond Browne, QC for the star, quoted in the Daily Mail: "The judgment may be treated as the death of the celebrity privacy".

Patrick Cockburn in The Independent: "Reporting wars has become much more dangerous now than it was half a century ago. The first armed conflict I wrote about was in Belfast in the early 1970s, when I used to joke that newly formed paramilitary groups appointed a press officer even before they bought a gun. In the first years of the Lebanese Civil War after 1975, the different militias used to hand journalists formal letters telling their checkpoints to allow free passage. There were so many militias that I was afraid of mixing up the letters, which looked rather alike, and used to keep those from left-wing groups tucked into my left sock and those from right-wing groups into the right one."

Kevin Rawlinson in the Guardian: "Those working in newsrooms talk of dubious stories being tolerated because, in the words of one, some senior editors think 'a click is a click, regardless of the merit of a story'. And, if the story does turn out to be false, it’s simply a chance for another bite at the cherry."

Letter to the Guardian from reader Andrew Anderson protesting at the paper's cover price rise: "Why am I being asked to increase my subsidy for your free online version?"

Independent local newspaper publisher Chris Bullivant in a letter criticising the Government for inaction over the Trinity Mirror-Local World takeover, published by Press Gazette: "For an example of the stultifying effect of daily newspaper monopoly in England one needs look no further than Rotherham. If true newspaper competition were operational there the attacks on 1500 young women would not have gone unreported for so long. I believe, by accident or design, an opportunity to break into the regional monopolies existent in all of the cities of England has been thwarted by Government inaction either directly or via the quangos that sometimes 'front' Government decisions."

From the Independent: "Being a newspaper reporter has been ranked the worst job for the third year in a row. Jobs in the media were seen as precarious because the loss of media organisations as a result of the decline in advertising revenue."

Cockburn and Burchill: Do they need to talk?

Top, the Independent's award winning foreign correspondent Patrick Cockburn makes the case for holding talks with the Taliban in an article in the paper on Friday.
Today, (below) new Independent columnist Julie Burchill describes those suggesting talking to the Taliban as "clowns and cowards".

'My shame at being duped over Iraq war'

Journalist David Rose has told how he still feels "shamed and disgusted" at the way he was duped by those who wanted to go to war in Iraq.

Speaking in a debate at the Frontline Club, Rose who reported for the Observer and Vanity Fair in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq said he had interviewed people who had purported to be defectors from the Saddam regime who had told "a pack of lies".

He said that intelligence services knew that some of the sources were fabricating information about Iraq but they were still used to back claims that Saddam had Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Rose added: "I don't think people quite realise how cynical the process of manipulation by those who wanted this war was. I still feel shamed and disgusted at being duped to that extent."

The Independent's Iraq correspondent Patrick Cockburn  said the opposition to Saddam knew there was no chance of a coup inside the country to overthrow him and knew they had to keep prodding the US to get rid of him.

Cockburn claimed that "if you know which US and British correspondents to go to you can have a good idea of what's happend in Iraq since the invasion". But he said coverage in the run-up to the war was "notoriously bad". Cockburn criticised as "appalling" the many "experts" and "talking heads" who are used by the media to comment on Iraq.

Former Radio 4 Today programme editor Kevin Marsh, now editor of the BBC College of Journalism, claimed: "Some parts of the media may have some accounting to do but the media as a whole has together done a far better job than any of the official inquiries into the Iraq war have done."

He did add, however, "I think the way in which the Lobby was orchestrated by Alastair Campbell was not the Lobby's finest hour."

Cockburn stressed the importance of having experienced reporters on the ground. "Good reporting comes from people who've been there a long time." But he admitted it had become far more dangerous for journalists to operate on their own in war zones. 

Rose pointed out that the media industry was in danger of collapsing as the old business models failed and editorial budgets came under pressure.

"The first place that feels the pinch is covering foreign conflicts - not Cheryl Cole," he said.

Pic: (Left to Right) Patrick Cockburn, Kevin Marsh and David Rose.