Thursday 29 March 2018

Media Quotes of the Week: From shock and dismay at media behaviour over Manchester Arena attack to how to beat the data bandits - buy a newspaper!




Lord Kerslake's report into the Manchester Arena terrorist attack: "Families felt "hounded" by the media, with reports of a "scrum" of journalists outside hospitals; Children from two families - who lost a mother and brother, respectively - were offered condolences by reporters at their homes before the deaths had been officially confirmed; Hospital staff were offered £2,000 to speak to the press by way of a note hidden in a tin of biscuits."

Kerslake Report: "The Panel was shocked and dismayed by the accounts of the families of their experience with some of the media. To have experienced such intrusive and overbearing behaviour at a time of enormous vulnerability seemed to us to be completely unacceptable."

Kerslake Report: "There is a positive role that the press can play in communicating on behalf of families and in fundraising. The Manchester Evening News, for example, raised a million pounds for the emergency appeal in 24 hours."

Kerslake Report recommendation"The Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) should review the operation of its code in the light of the experiences described by contributors to the Review and consider developing a new code specifically to cover such events."

Kerslake Report recommendation"Statutory Responders should engage with local trusted press and broadcasters as key participants in planning and rehearsing responses to major incidents to anticipate and test out ways in which families and victims can be best protected from inappropriate press approaches, whilst recognising the legitimate desire of journalists to report on the human impact of such events."


Jon Snow in the Guardian: "As a journalist, I am grateful every waking day for what I am able to do thanks to the internet. But I loathe the idea that a company such as Cambridge Analytica has the capacity to work out whether I am susceptible to covert messaging that will affect the way I vote. Facebook has enabled us to secure literally billions of viewings of the news clips we post on our site. But in doing so we provide material around which it can sell advertising. Channel 4 News gets no revenue for this... We have been arguing fiercely with Facebook, and Google, that they owe us a fairer share...Unless the tech giants start to take notice, there is a real danger that next time there might be no “old media” left to call them out."


Campbell Brown, head of news partnerships at Facebook, addressing the FT Future of News conference: “If it were me I would have probably not threatened to sue the Guardian,” adding it was “not our wisest move."


Boris Johnson‏@BorisJohnson on Twitter:  "Observer/C4 story utterly ludicrous, #VoteLeave won fair & square - and legally. We are leaving the EU in a year and going global "


Culture secretary Matt Hancock, speaking at a lunch for journalists, quoted by the Daily Mail"In my view, it is only someone like Tom Watson who would think that it is a good idea to put Max Mosley in charge of regulating the Jewish Chronicle."

Tom Watson on Matt Hancock, quoted by the Daily Mail"This ambitious minister’s capitulation to his powerful friends in the Press over Leveson is a betrayal of all victims of phone hacking and Press intrusion."


The Times [£] in a leader: "It is a nervous regime that fears an experienced foreign correspondent conducting an innocuous interview in a Cairo café. Bel Trew, The Times’s reporter in the Egypt of President al-Sisi (pictured), has been arrested, interrogated, put on a list of “undesirables” and forced to leave the country after a chain of misunderstandings, heavy-handed police treatment and official obfuscation. Her ejection after seven years in Egypt exposes the regime’s weaknesses as it drifts away from democracy."


Former Monocle intern Amalia Illgner in the Guardian: "Halfway through my internship, I landed my first front-page piece for Monocle’s Summer Weekly newspaper. It was a personal coup, but after 20 hours of research and writing – done in my own time – the thrill of a byline paled against the glaring fact that I was not being paid for the story. The privilege of working for almost nothing no longer seemed like a viable way to get ahead. A few months later, I would start proceedings against Monocle for unpaid wages."


Adam Bolton in the Sunday Times [£] on Jeremy Corbyn: "The massive breach of 50m users’ privacy at Facebook was topping the headlines. So, Corbyn was asked, would Labour be closing its Facebook pages? Since Labour was making much of links between Conservatives and Cambridge Analytica, an answer concerning the dangers of the internet might have been expected. That is not Corbyn’s way. Far from criticising the tech giants, he turned sarcastically on the source of the question.'Social media is a great way of communicating, because our message then doesn’t have to be moderated by highly responsible journalists like yourself,' he taunted, prompting uproarious applause from supporters."


James Harding, giving the Hugh Cudlipp Lecture"In the UK, rather than trimming what the BBC is doing online and on social media, we should be investing and expanding it. We need to strengthen the public square in the digital space. We need to create common ground and room for civilised disagreement. We need to ensure young people can easily get the information they need to be active citizens. We need safe environments to inform and entertain on the internet. . . If we want to strengthen the system of freedom and choice, both in our country and around the world, we should strengthen the BBC."


Steerpike in a comment on HoldTheFrontPage about 49 more redundancies at Trinity Mirror: "I want a job as a Trinity Mirror spokesman. As long as there was one other person still yet to be made redundant, I’d have a job for life."


John Greechan‏ @jonnythegreekon twitter: "If you buy a newspaper today, the actual paper thing, it’s unlikely to contain a piece of secret code that will steal all your data. Just saying. #buyapaper"

[£]=paywall

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