Friday 31 October 2014

Media Quotes of the Week: From killers of journalists are getting away with it to why does Rupert Murdoch still keep working at 83?



Committee to Protect Journalists in a new report The Road to Justice which highlights the way the killers of journalists are escaping justice: "The lack of justice in hundreds of murders of journalists around the world is one of the greatest threats to press freedom today. While international attention to the issue has grown over the past decade, there has been little progress in bringing down rates of impunity. States will have to demonstrate far more political will to implement international commitments to make an impact on the high rates of targeted violence that journalists routinely face."


The International Federation of Journalists is marking the inaugural ‘UN Day to End Impunity’ by calling on governments worldwide to address the issue of impunity for violence against journalists as intimidation, abuse and violence of media workers continues to escalate. The UN’s International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists is marked for the first time ton Sunday, 2 November, the first anniversary of the killings of two French RFI reporters, Ghislaine Dupont and Claude Verlon, murdered in Kidal, Mali in 2013.


IFJ President Jim Boumelha said: “2014 will be sadly remembered not just as another tragic year where journalists are routinely killed, but for the barbaric clips of the beheadings of the US journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff which will stay with us forever. This is a new dimension that we have never seen before and we are determined to bring to an end. We are of course grateful that the international institutions have established the UN Day to End Impunity, but they should be doing more to make governments take responsibility for the security and protection of journalists.”


Paul Dacre, speaking at the 175th anniversary of the NewstraAid Benevolent Fund, as reported by the Guardian: “I note with some irony that there has been no judicial inquiry into the BBC’s role in the Jimmy Savile and Rolf Harris scandals. The News of the World may have hacked celebrities’ phones, it didn’t sexually abuse teenage children. And as for the BBC’s negativity about the popular press, I say be careful of what you wish for. Support government controls shackling the press and you may find that the political class comes for you next. The media as a whole should be united in defending freedom of expression.”
Scoops: Neville Thurlbeck
Literary agent Andrew Lownie on Tabloid Secrets, an account of Neville Thurlbeck's scoops for the News of the World, as reported by Press Gazette“For 25 years, Neville served up some of the most famous headlines and he reveals for the first time how he broke his award winning stories which thrilled, excited and sometimes infuriated the nation. The book is laced with drama, fun, humour and occasional tragedy and gives a candid first hand account of a cavalier, barn-storming Fleet Street which has vanished for good.”


The Mail on Sunday: "A Mail on Sunday journalist trying to uncover the truth about Fiona Woolf’s appointment to the child abuse inquiry received unwarranted threats from a PR man claiming to be working with the Home Office. This newspaper was warned it would be reported to the new press complaints watchdog for simply arranging an interview with another panel member who could shed light on the controversy."


Peter Preston in The Observer on the death of Ben Bradlee:  "But the basic Bradlee, living on in legend, also asks one of the most immediate questions journalism – in print, on air, across the net – has to grapple with. Simply, do we need editors any longer? The new seeming editor of the Daily Telegraph arrives disguised as 'director of content' reporting to a 'chief content officer'. Trinity Mirror makes a cost-conscious group habit of rolling its local editorships into a distant one. A former BBC online master is busy remaking Johnston Press in his image and experience. The imperatives of 'digital first' puts copy into cyberspace in a moment and works out later whether, if at all, it will fit into some computerised print grid."

Observer readers' editor Stephen Pritchard on complaints about the paper's regional coverage: "In some respects, though, the paper can’t win. In the past, when it had the resources to fill editionised pages with local news, readers would complain that they did not want to read about their own region: they wanted the Observer to tell them about matters that affect the nation as a whole and to give them a world view. But still that’s no excuse for failing to reflect regional differences in national stories: Britain is more than England – and England is more than London and the south-east – but that’s another story."


Peter Oborne on his Telegraph blog: "The scabrous political blogger Guido Fawkes (real name Paul Staines), who played host, loves to name names, notoriously publishing lists of those who go to lunch at Downing Street or dine at Chequers. Well, I did the same at his 10th anniversary. (Yes, I was among the mob of free-loading hypocrites who were there.) As the dinner ended, I went up to the board of the place settings, ripped it down, and put it in my pocket. When his own crude, though effective, methods of exposure are used against him, Guido can get quite cross. There was a stir. Anyway, I kept the list."


An anonymous PR on dealing with journalists, on the Guardian's Media Network: "A PR friend of mine once told me how she’d taken a journalist on a trip to a wine region in Europe to visit a range of producers. The said journalist proceeded to drink, rather than taste and spit, at each visit and then, at the evening dinner with the regional bigwigs, announced in a slurred voice that she didn’t like any of their wines and please could they order her a glass of champagne instead."


Ian Burrell in the Independent on the turmoil at the Telegraph: "To the outside world it seems like madness but the Telegraph operates to strict financial targets. Senior management is under pressure to better last year’s £61.2m profit as the calendar year closes."


Rupert Murdoch, after being asked by Business insider why he is still working at 83: "Curiosity."

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