Thursday 9 April 2015

Media Quotes of the Week: From newspapers are crazy not to nurture their older readers to rise of the SNP freaks out a fearful Fleet Street



Stefano Hatfield in the Guardian: "Newspapers are crazy, newspapers spend so much money chasing a market that is not really interested in them, young people, instead of nurturing the audience they’ve got, that is, 50 somethings. I think they are just beginning to wake up to that, just beginning to change.”


Grey Cardigan @thegreycardigan on Twitter: "Is this really the front page of a national newspaper?"



Sean O’Neill, crime and security editor of The Times [£], : "Welcome to post-Leveson Britain — whose leaders march in Paris for free speech and declare 'Je suis Charlie' while at home they undermine the same principle. The buzzwords of our 'information age' are transparency, scrutiny, big data and 24-hour live feeds. The reality is that we face a blizzard of 'content' which is blinding us to the fact that we are being led by the nose into a sinister period of state secrecy, control and censorship."


The Daily Mail in a leader on Edward Snowden: The Mail is passionate in its defence of free speech, but this right has to be balanced against public safety and we remain convinced these leaks have seriously weakened Britain’s ability to protect its citizens. Snowden has made us all less safe and the Guardian, in its self-righteousness, has been his willing accomplice."



Roy Greenslade on his Media Guardian blog: "The supposed virtue of a journalism of the people by the people for the people is nothing more than a way of publishers maximising profit. Media companies are using the technology as a way of reducing labour costs rather than as a way of democratising, and thereby enhancing, editorial content."


Guardian readers' editor Chris Elliott on protests over the paper commissioning a piece by Kelvin MacKenzie on immigration: "My journalistic instincts tell me it is wrong to ban MacKenzie, not least because readers wouldn’t have read his admission that the Sun maligned minorities. But what I realised on re-reading the emails is that this may appear an indulgent, abstract view of the world to those whose lives were shattered by the deaths at Hillsborough and who have lived with it every day since. We acknowledge that."

Nick Davies in the Guardian: "A man who worked closely with Rupert Murdoch for years says: 'Rupert is very loyal … until he isn’t any more.' There is no sign of his retaining any loyalty to his disobedient prime minister. Nor is there the faintest glimmer of affection for Ed Miliband, who had reached only the earliest stage of attempted hand-holding before speaking out against the hacking and – much more serious – organising the sabotage of the Murdoch bid for BSkyB... So,Cameron and Miliband and anybody else who fancies themselves as a political leader might as well speak out – to protest against news organisations that print propaganda and call it journalism, who are happy to smear and to expose the sex lives of those who dare oppose them, who behave as though it were their job to decide who runs the country, who after all the scandal and all the exposure of their crimes and abuse of power still enjoy the prerogative of harlots. What do those politicians have to lose? Nothing but the chains of fear."




Meanwhile In Scotia @MeanwhileScotia on Twitter: "Can anyone spot the subtle difference between the English and Scottish versions of The Daily Mail#NoCashPrize"



BBC Scotland's James Cook @BBCJamesCook on Twitter: "What an extraordinary level of vicious abuse I have received today for simply reporting the news. Is this the country we want folks? Is it?"

Fraser Nelson on his Spectator blog: "To nationalist zealots, a BBC journalist asking challenging questions of the Dear Leader is inherently reprehensible and demonstrates a collapse of journalistic standards. Today, even serious SNP-sympathising commentators have been demanding that the Telegraph apologises for revealing a leaked memo...The SNP leadership are, in my experience, refreshingly open-minded, good-humoured and intelligent. But the problem with nationalisms as a creed is that it attracts, as its followers, an angry mob – in the SNP’s case, a digital lynch mob. I suspect we’ll hear a lot more from them before this campaign is out."

openDemocracy: "Anyone could be forgiven for thinking that Westminster has been replaced with a bouncy castle, and our political class with hysterical children. As the long anticipated rise of the SNP looms closer into sight, the Conservative press seems to have wet itself in fear."

[£]=paywall

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