Thursday 26 October 2017

Media Quotes of the Week: From Donald Trump boosts young paying for news media to the Facebook move which should terrify publishers



The Times [£] in a leader: "Researchers have found that millennials in the United States are subscribing to traditional news publications in record numbers. Since the election of Donald Trump, old titles like The Economist, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal have seen much of their subscriber growth among under-35s. The picture on this side of the Atlantic is less clear, but there are signs that British youngsters will pay for their news too. According to research by Compass, a media start-up, two thirds of students at Russell Group universities say that they would pay a regular fee for journalism they trust."


News UK’s chief operating officer David Dinsmore speaking at the Press Gazette Digital Media Summit:
“We have arrived at a moment in time and it is not an exaggeration to say that where we go from here will shape our democracy and society. We will either forge genuine, mutually beneficial partnerships between news gatherers and platforms or we will watch as the news becomes ever more fake and public faith in democracy collapses.”


Anna Bridgeman‏ @HouseofBargain on Twitter: "Fully support #payinterns. I interned for almost a year in London, 4 years ago (in various national magazines) and wasn’t paid a penny."






Yevgenia Albats, a Russian magazine editor, quoted by the Guardian after Tatyana Felgenhauer of the Ekho Moskvy radio station, was stabbed: “The amount of aggression directed towards liberal journalists in this country from state media and elsewhere is overwhelming and non-stop. Nobody is going to defend us; we’re the enemies of everyone.”


Former US President Jimmy Carter, interviewed in the New York Times: “I think the media have been harder on Trump than any other president certainly that I’ve known about, I think they feel free to claim that Trump is mentally deranged and everything else without hesitation.”


Donald Trump on Twitter: "Keep hearing about "tiny" amount of money spent on Facebook ads. What about the billions of dollars of Fake News on CNN, ABC, NBC & CBS?"


Brexit backer Aaron Banks in a statement to Newsnight:
“Since the referendum result and my support for Donald Trump I’ve been the subject of politically motivated attacks by mainstream media and Remain-supporting institutions. It comes as no surprise that Newsnight would join the party at this late stage with their own particular type of trashy News of The World journalism. After allegations of me being a Russian spy, part of a worldwide conspiracy to subvert democracy, the only surprise is how long its taken for Newsnight to have a pop at me. BBC Fake News is alive and well.”


Kurt Wagner on Recode"Facebook may make it harder for people to see publishers’ stories, unless those publishers pay to promote them. As part of a new test in six countries, Facebook is taking content from publishers and businesses out of its main feed. Instead, those posts will exist in a separate, hard-to-find feed that Facebook recently launched for discovering new stuff, called the 'Explore Feed.'...Though Facebook claims it doesn’t plan to roll this out globally right now, the fact that Facebook is even testing it should be terrifying for publishers, almost all of whom rely heavily on Facebook’s News Feed for distribution."

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Friday 20 October 2017

Media Quotes of the Week: Murder in Malta puts spotlight on attacks on the media worldwide as President Trump twitter rages at US journalists



The Malta Independent in a leader on the murder by a car bomb of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia:  "All over the social media people have been crying this was a black day for Malta. And that democracy is under threat. It was indeed a black day. But as regards the survival of democracy, that depends on each and every one of us.  As we said after the Charlie Hebdo terror attack, JesuisCharlie, so too we say today IamDaphne. Her spirit must come to inhabit each and every one of us."

Matthew Caruana Galizia on Facebook"My mother was assassinated because she stood between the rule of law and those who sought to violate it, like many strong journalists. But she was also targeted because she was the only person doing so. This is what happens when the institutions of the state are incapacitated: the last person left standing is often a journalist."

The New York Times in a leader on the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia: "For journalists around the world, this is the new normal. They are rounded up en masse and imprisoned in Turkey and murdered in Russia and the Philippines. In India, they have been slapped with spurious defamation suitswhen they report on suspicious doings of the powerful, and beaten by mobs and killed for their reporting — Gauri Lankesh was gunned down last month in front of her home. Even the president of the United States questions the patriotism of journalists for doing their job and taunts them in front of angry crowds."

The Guardian in a leader: "It is not special pleading to point out that journalists and journalism are facing extraordinary challenges: Mrs Caruana Galizia is the 10th journalist worldwide to die this year – and the second in Europe – in pursuit of finding the truth. The assassination of an investigative journalist, one who had unearthed serious allegations of money laundering and corruption in Malta, a European Union state, speaks volumes about the threat to freedom of speech in that country and the atmosphere of impunity and violence that has taken hold in the Mediterranean archipelago... Her bravery cost her her life. It should not be lost in vain."


The Times [£] in a leader: "It is unconscionable that a Nato member benefiting from the most valuable mutual security guarantee in the free world should be trampling so blatantly on a fundamental advantage it can offer its own citizens — that of freedom of expression. Mr Erdogan’s government has jailed more journalists than any other country. It has shut down more than 150 media outlets as part of a state of emergency proclaimed last year. It claims that the courts are acting independently in special circumstances created by the failed coup in Ankara and elsewhere. In reality, as the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists has noted, 'Turkey’s judicial system has become an instrument of persecution'.”


Damian Green to lobby journalists about the Evening Standard, as reported by Politics Home: “The Evening StandardRussia Today with less George Galloway.”


Quentin Letts to Polly Toynbee on the Today programme: “Do you know, whenever I’m on with Polly I wish I could just pin her to the ground and tickle her under the armpits and make you smile my dear!”


Polly Toynbee on Quentin Letts in the Guardian: "Pin me down? Tickle me? Can you imagine him saying that to Simon Jenkins or Jonathan Freedland? There was no harm done: I’m not vulnerable. But on Twitter there was anger at another wearying reminder of the extent to which contempt for women informs the Mail culture."


Walter Merricks CBE, the chair of IMPRESS, in a statement after the High Court rejected a claim by the News Media Association, representing major publishers, that IMPRESS should not have been recognised as a press regulator: "This judgment shows that the system of externally verified self-regulation, recommended by Sir Brian Leveson, is fully functional. We can now get on with the important job of upholding high standards of journalism. At a time when the news publishing industry is under massive pressure, IMPRESS is uniquely able to reduce publishers’ legal risks and enhance their standing in the eyes of audiences and advertisers. We are grateful for the ongoing support of the NUJ, Sir Harry Evans and many others in and around the industry, and sorry that the NMA have wasted so much time attacking IMPRESS, which meets the standards that they refuse to meet"


The News Media Association in a statement, reported by The Times [£]: “Impress is a state-sponsored regulator funded almost entirely by one wealthy individual, Max Mosley, and headed by a chief executive who has admitted to holding biases against leading newspapers and journalists. Impress cannot and never will be a regulator for the UK newspaper industry which remains wholly opposed to Section 40.”


Nick Cohen in the Observer: "Instead of being populated by serious thinkers, Brexit’s thinktanks are filled with propagandists, tabloid hacks and tax-exile newspaper proprietors. Boris Johnson and Michael Gove are columnists turned politicians. The Sun, Telegraph, Mail and Express do not just cheer on the cause while the grown-ups make the real decisions, as they did in Margaret Thatcher’s day. They are what brains the Brexit campaign possesses."


Donald J. Trump‏@realDonaldTrump on Twitter: " '46% of Americans think the Media is inventing stories about Trump & his Administration.' @FoxNews It is actually much worse than this!"

Donald J. Trump‏@realDonaldTrump on Twitter: "So much Fake News being put in dying magazines and newspapers. Only place worse may be @NBCNews, @CBSNews, @ABC and @CNN. Fiction writers!"
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Thursday 12 October 2017

Media Quotes of the Week: From did Harvey Weinstein buy journalists' silence? to how the Daily Mail helped John Lennon write Beatles' songs



Rebecca Traister in The Cut on an altercation between Harvey Weinstein and her boyfriend after she asked a question he didn't like: "Such was the power of Harvey Weinstein in 2000 that despite the dozens of camera flashes that went off on that sidewalk that night, capturing the sight of an enormously famous film executive trying to pound in the head of a young newspaper reporter, I have never once seen a photo. Back then, Harvey could spin — or suppress — anything; there were so many journalists on his payroll, working as consultants on movie projects, or as screenwriters, or for his magazine."

Tina Brown in the New York Times: "Harvey spent most of the hours of his working day ensuring that all the bad stories went away, killed, evaporated, spun into something diametrically its opposite. It was a common sight outside a Harvey opening party to see one of his publicists trapped in a car on the phone, spinning — spinning the dross of some new outrage into gold...When I founded Talk magazine in 1998 with Miramax, the movie company Harvey founded with his brother Bob, I also took over the running of their fledgling book company...It was startling — and professionally mortifying — to discover how many hacks writing gossip columns or entertainment coverage were on the Miramax payroll with a 'consultancy' or a 'development deal'."

How The New York Times broke Weinstein story
Amol Rajan‏@amolrajanBBC on Twitter: "Hey you guys who hate the mainstream media. It’s thanks to @nytimes that Ailes and now Weinstein are exposed. Courageous, patient reporting."


Roy Greenslade on his Ipso blog:  "What is crystal clear is that the future of journalism depends on publishers securing a guaranteed form of income. And the best hope lies in recouping money from the two major Silicon Valley giants, Google and Facebook, which use newspaper journalistic content while attracting a huge share of available advertising...It is vital that Google and Facebook are persuaded of the benefits of sharing some of their profits with established news providers...I can accept the loss of newspapers (just about). What I cannot countenance is the loss of the journalism they have provided for 160 years and more. "


James Harding in an announcement to staff that he's leaving the BBC, as reported by Media Guido: “There is some journalism that the BBC, for all its brilliance, can’t, and probably shouldn’t, do. And that’s what I want to explore: I am going to start a new media company with a distinct approach to the news and a clear point of view. I know I will enjoy the chance to do some more journalism of my own and, at such a critical time, I’m seriously excited about the prospect of building a new venture in news.”
  • David Yelland‏ on Twitter: "Sign of a digital era when an editor leaves to make and build news not work for the owner of a press or studio..."


Albert Read, managing director of Condé Nast Britain, quoted in the Guardian on why monthly magazine Glamour was switching to a digital first strategy with just two print editions a year: Today’s Glamour consumer moves to a different rhythm than the one who bought the magazine when it launched in 2001. It is a faster, more focused, multi-platform relationship."


Private Eye editor Ian Hislop in The Times [£] after a judge rejected a Herts Police request that the magazine hand over a list of subscribers in three counties after a joke cut out from its pages was sent to a force employee: “I was surprised when the police contacted us over this, really surprised when they insisted that they were serious and absolutely amazed when they went to court over it. What was not in the least surprising was that the judge threw the case out.”


John Harris in the Guardian: "Even partisan commentary can be rooted in the principles of good journalism, so long as it does not ignore uncomfortable facts, blindly offer support to parties or leaders, or distort actuality to score political points. More than that, though, the idea of journalism as a route to the truth is every bit as worthwhile as it ever was. But it is also under threat. In the Facebook age, outlets that value the idea of dispassionate inquiry and dogged research are feeling the pinch, while a great ocean of polemic, often written for nothing and barely interested in the world’s endless complexities, grows ever larger."


Owen Jones in the Guardian: "In this year’s election, four out of 10 voters just opted for a Labour party offering an unapologetically socialist platform. It is a travesty that the ideas represented by that manifesto remain fringe opinion in the British press. Our media has a straightforward choice. Cater for the growing demand for dissenting views – or be challenged by new media outlets that do."


Donald J. Trump‏ on Twitter: "Why Isn't the Senate Intel Committee looking into the Fake News Networks in OUR country to see why so much of our news is just made up-FAKE!"

Trump speaking in the Oval Office, as reported by The Hill“It is frankly disgusting the press is able to write whatever it wants to write, and people should look into it.”


Former New York Daily News gossip writer Lloyd Grove on Trump in the Columbia Journalism Review: "His current cold war with the press—featuring name-calling, antagonism, and bitter feuds—runs counter to a media strategy that served Trump well his entire adult life. Through a combination of ego, ruthless energy, laser-like focus, utter availability, and even charm, he controlled the narrative about himself for the better part of four decades—especially in the New York tabloids, of which I was a part—and turned his name into a valuable commodity. Now he has lost that control, and Trump simply has no idea how to respond."


Cotswold Life in an editorial: "It may come as a terrible shock to those who live in their own ‘Hate the Daily Mail’ bubble, but working class hero John Lennon was actually a reader of that much-reviled (and very successful) newspaper. The evidence comes at us direct from 1967 and the lyrics to A Day in the Life from the ground-breaking Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album. On January 7 of that year, the Mail carried a report about the death of a friend of Lennon’s, Tara Browne, who drove into the back of a lorry at 106mph in Kensington. 'He blew his mind out in a car...' That same day’s newspaper also carried a story about there being 4,000 potholes in the town of Blackburn, Lancashire. So the Mail helped pen some famous Beatles’ lyrics. Now there’s not many people know that..."

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Thursday 5 October 2017

Media Quotes of the Week: From digital giants help the spread of false news about Las Vegas shooting to the Clare Balding copy control saga



Alexis C. Madigral in The Atlantic: "In the crucial early hours after the Las Vegas mass shooting, it happened again: Hoaxes, completely unverified rumors, failed witch hunts, and blatant falsehoods spread across the internet. But they did not do so by themselves: They used the infrastructure that Google and Facebook and YouTube have built to achieve wide distribution. These companies are the most powerful information gatekeepers that the world has ever known, and yet they refuse to take responsibility for their active role in damaging the quality of information reaching the public."


Kevin Roose in The New York Times: "When they woke up and glanced at their phones on Monday morning, Americans may have been shocked to learn that the man behind the mass shooting in Las Vegas late on Sunday was an anti-Trump liberal who liked Rachel Maddow and MoveOn.org, that the F.B.I. had already linked him to the Islamic State, and that mainstream news organizations were suppressing that he had recently converted to Islam.They were shocking, gruesome revelations. They were also entirely false — and widely spread by Google and Facebook."


Nick Robinson, giving the inaugural Steve Hewlett Memorial Lectureas reported by Press Gazette: "Campaigners on the left as well as the right have been looking and listening and learning at what has happened across the pond. They know that there is method behind what some regard as the madness of The Donald’s attacks on the 'failing' press as purveyors of 'fake news'. Attacks on the media are no longer a lazy clap line delivered to a party conference to the raise the morale of a crowd of the party faithful. They are part of a guerilla war being fought on social media day after day and hour after hour."

Photograph: Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA
Jonathan Jones in the Guardian"Like naked mole rats scurrying endlessly in a plastic burrow, foreign secretary Boris Johnson and the Sun editor Tony Gallagher are photographed together. They’re seemingly in the belief that the Conservative party and its media allies have a destination, somewhere to get to, something urgent to do – other than wait for the tide of history to engulf them. Gallagher seems more aware of the futility of it all than Johnson, who keeps going like a puffed-up hamster. That’s right, keep turning the wheel, there’s a treat in store. Gallagher meanwhile appears not just breathless but depressed. He looks tired, tired of it all – not just the jogging but the lies, the distortions, the greasy pole."


Steve Coogan after reaching a six-figure settlement with Trinity Mirror over having his phone hacked, as quoted by Press Gazette“It is my belief that hacking at the Mirror’s papers took place for up to 15 years. Journalists at all three papers – the Daily Mirror, the Sunday Mirror and the People – and successive editors hacked the phones of thousands of people, not just celebrities and public figures, but their families and people who just happened to be in the news. The way they have behaved is a disgrace to the record of what was a fine newspaper publisher and an insult to the memory of Hugh Cudlipp.”


Impress chief executive Jonathan Heawood in Press Gazette after a review panel concluded he had brought the state-approved press regulator into disrepute and he should be recused from any regulatory decisions affecting publishers with turnover above £20m: "I am so disappointed to have let the side down...Among thousands of other tweets and retweets, I shared a few posts that took aim at the Mail and the Sun, in relation to their coverage of the EU and migration issues....I believe that journalists should be prepared to put their hands up and accept when they have made a mistake. So should regulators. And that’s what I am doing."


Sarah Baxter in the Sunday Times [£]: "It’s worth noting that The Sunday Times and other national newspapers refused to join Impress — under threat of severe financial penalties in libel and privacy cases — precisely because the organisation, which is supported by the campaign group Hacked Off, seemed riddled with bias. Now it has emerged that Impress itself agrees with that verdict. A self-respecting boss would have resigned when the damning internal report came out.”


Peter Preston in the Observer: "What I can’t quite forgive, though, is the way – six months late – in which the Impress website reported the internal investigation into this folly. 'Impress is growing fast, with publishers reaching 4.5 million monthly readers', trumpets the relevant press release. You have to plough down to the very end and click before you discover the imposition of a new code of conduct plus 'detailed findings and recommendations' and assorted recusings. Score one for stupidity at the top, but score nothing at all for transparency: a total own goal. Wholly unimpressive."







Ginny Dougray, who claimed in The Observer she asked for her byline be taken off a Clare Balding interview for Saga because the sports presenter and her agent had made changes and added quotes to her copy: "At a time when journalism is under siege everywhere – when fake news sites are on the rise and online newspapers just help themselves to journalists’ articles and present them as their own – it is more important than ever for those of us who are still writing to stand up for the values that attracted us to the profession in the first place."


Saga Magazine in a statement, reported by BBC News: "Saga Magazine does not offer copy control, and interviews that require it are declined. In this case, quotes were checked for accuracy alone. New quotes were sourced to rebalance the article against deadline."

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