Peter Worthington has had an amazing life. And his obituary, which he wrote himself, certainly has an arresting opening line.
Where journalists have greatness thrust upon them
Jon Slattery
A freelance journalist writing from the UK.
Updated: 1 hour 14 min ago
Quotes of the Week: Twitter becomes a Weapon of Mass Destruction and winds up Polly Toynbee
24 May 2013 - 12:00am
Ben Brogan about Twitter on his Telegraph blog: "Politically, the micro-blogging site has become a weapon of mass destruction. Where Alastair Campbell complained about the drumbeat of the 24-hour news channels, Mr Cameron must contend with the minute-by-minute verdict of social media, where his performances and policies are scrutinised, judged and discarded instantly. Where journalists used to meet in the bar, they now exchange gags and gossip on Twitter. It is a political accelerant."
Times executive editor Roger Alton picking up the London Press Club award for best daily newspaper of the year, as reported by Press Gazette's Axegrinder: "Thanks to the London Press Club for standing by the British press and celebrating its excellence at a time when it’s under some ferocious attack from an unruly collection of clapped-out hackademics, coked-up celebrities, loved-up lawyers, vengeful politicians [applause, cries of ‘well-said Rog’]. They are bastards one and all."
John Humphrys picking up the London Press Club's broadcaster of the year award, modestly suggests it should have gone to someone else: “All I had to do was get the director general sacked.”
ITN spokesman defends broadcasting video of bloodied Woolwich murder suspect, as reported by the Guardian: "We carefully considered showing this footage ahead of broadcast and made the decision to do so on a public interest basis as the material is integral to understanding the horrific incident that took place."
Simon Jenkins in the Guardian: "The Woolwich killers wanted publicity for their crime, available nowadays at the click of a mobile phone. They got it in buckets. Any incident is now transmitted instantly round the globe by the nearest 'citizen journalist'. The deranged of all causes and continents can step on stage and enjoy the freedom of cyberspace. Kill someone in the street and an obliging passerby will transmit the 'message' to millions."
Max Hastings in the Daily Mail: "Some 30 years ago, Margaret Thatcher, as prime minister, imposed a ban upon the broadcasting of interviews with members of Sinn Fein and the IRA, to ‘deny them the oxygen of publicity’. But in the modern world in which privacy is almost extinct, and censorship unenforceable as well as unacceptable, it would have been impossible to prevent the Woolwich killers from triggering an avalanche of national and worldwide publicity."
Melanie Hall in the Telegraph: "Every officer in England and Wales will have to formally declare any friendship outside his workplace with a journalist, effectively meaning that people working in media organisations would be placed in the same bracket as criminals."
Keith Perch on his blog: "Johnston Press is gaining just £1 in digital sales for every £21 in print sales lost. There can be little doubt that newspaper companies are shrinking in size. Indeed, it is my belief that the only way local newspaper companies are going to survive is if they become small, low cost, digital and print businesses."
Local World chairman David Montgomery speaking to MPs on the Culture, Media and Sport select committee, as reported by Press Gazette: “We can’t keep taking costs out but employ the same production techniques in print. We have to be truly digital, so that in three or four years from now, much of our human interface will have disappeared. We will have to harvest content and publish it without human interface, which will change the role of journalists."
BBC Trust Review of BBC online services: "The BBC should develop plans to provide better local news and information, as a number of consultation respondents, and the BBC Trust’s Audience Councils, told us the BBC’s local sites are not as strong as its UK and international news."
Former Director of Public Prosecutions Ken Macdonald in the Mail on Sunday on keeping arrests secret: "It is, of course, true that the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) doesn’t really represent the police. Instead, it is an unaccountable club of senior policemen who have tended over the years to serve their own interests. But even so, their recent announcement that, when officers make arrests in the future, the identity of their prisoners will be kept secret from the public, is deeply shocking. This new policy is, it seems, a poorly judged over-reaction to perceived media and police excesses in the past and, in particular, to the strictures of the Leveson Inquiry."
Times obit on Richard Beeston, the paper's foreign editor: "Richard Beeston was one of the finest and most courageous foreign correspondents of his generation. Fearless, always fair, and unflappable even in the most extreme situations, he reported on many of the wars, civil wars and violent upheavals of the past 20 years, from Chechnya to Iraq, the Lebanese civil wars to the present bloodshed in Syria."
Judges' ruling that public has right to know that Boris Johnson fathered a child during an affair, as reported by the Guardian: "It is not in dispute that the legitimate public interest in the father's character is an important factor to be weighed in the balance against the claimant's expectation of privacy. The core information in this story, namely that the father had an adulterous affair with the mother, deceiving both his wife and the mother's partner and that the claimant, born about nine months later, was likely to be the father's child, was a public interest matter which the electorate was entitled to know when considering his fitness for high public office."
Chris Elliott, readers’ editor at the Guardian and chair of the NCTJ’s accreditation board, on HoldtheFrontPage about his struggle to learn shorthand: "I bought the cassettes and practised Ted Heath’s speeches until I finally became competent in Teeline. I paid to take exams and got 80 wpm – not perfect, but over the years it has become an invaluable tool that I still use every day. I wish I had got the 100. Of course there are tape recorders and mobile phones. There are also trains, boats and planes, but everyone takes their driving test because most of the time you drive yourself. Once learned, shorthand is there as a basic support forever; learn it because you’re worth it."
Polly Toynbee @pollytoynbee on Twitter: "Twitter suggests I follow Mail DepPol Ed. Check blurb:he boasts 'Breaking news and reputations' Is poison+malice re politicians prime purpose?"
Polly Toynbee @pollytoynbee on Twitter: "Time for bed: twitter is suggesting I follow Melanie Phillips."
Quotes of the Week: From nightmare interview with Ginger Baker to Fleet Street's Fergie frenzy
17 May 2013 - 12:00am
Michael Hann on the Guardian's Music Blog on interviewing drummer Ginger Baker (top) in front of a live audience: "I've had peculiar interviews before. I once sat on the floor in the dressing rooms at Spurs' training ground to talk to Sol Campbell, while John Scales stood just to my right, listening in. He was naked. His penis kept dangling in and out of my eyeline at disconcertingly close range. But I've never had any interview experience quite so unsettling as half an hour with Ginger Baker in front of a couple of hundred people. It's not something I want to repeat."
- Mark Ellen interviewed an irascible Ginger Baker for The Word in 2009, you can read an extract here.
Police Federation chairman Steve Williams, as quoted by the Daily Mail: "There’s been a sea change on the back of Leveson. Cops are very reluctant to speak to the media and say how it really is."
Simon Jenkins in the Guardian: "Giving in to terrorism has given data intrusion, "back door" surveillance and press restriction all the best tunes. The Pentagon pleads 9/11 and Whitehall pleads 7/7. Lord Justice Leveson can only plead Hugh Grant, but he is enough. They all say they want a "responsible press". But the direction of travel is the same, towards the pollution of freedom. Acts of government that would once have caused outrage are now met with a shrug."
Jeremy Clarkson in the Sunday Times [£]: "I’m constantly being hauled over the coals in the Daily Mail and the Daily Star and the Mirror for all sorts of things. Calling Gordon Brown a one-eyed Scottish idiot. Saying public sector workers should be executed. Sparking fury with fox enthusiasts. I’m portrayed as an evil, racist, homophobic misogynist who goes through life stabbing baby badgers for fun. And I’ve worked out that it makes no difference. Taxi drivers still pick me up. People still watch my television shows. My books aren’t remaindered for weeks; sometimes months. That’s because the endless criticism is just a background hum. The BBC should accept this. It should make decisions on what it thinks to be right, not on how that decision will be reviewed in the next day’s papers."
Grey Cardigan responds to a PR on TheSpinAlley: “Dear Kacey-Lee. Thank you for your interest in the well-being of myself and my family. Unfortunately I couldn’t get out in the sun to enjoy myself because I am twice-divorced and therefore don’t have enough money to even pay for a Mr Whippy. As for a barbecue, a Lidl sausage toasted over a blow-lamp is about my limit. My children won’t talk to me, my latest ex-wife is shagging an investment banker while still shafting me for every penny she can get, and I can’t go out in the sun because I have red hair and turn bright crimson if I even walk past a microwave oven. Anyway, it was rainy and foggy up here, somewhere north of Kensington, so there was no sun anyway. Oh, and my dog died, which somewhat took the gloss off the weekend…”
David Simon in The Observer: "You already have too much prior restraint of the British press. I couldn't operate under your press law, couldn't do good journalism consistently. Your ability to criticise people in public or reveal secrets that are in the public's interest are much more constrained than ours. And I find that to be unworkable in terms of democracy."
The Times [£]: "Local authorities are threatening to withdraw advertising from newspapers that publish stories they do not like, according to a survey that examined the impact of the Leveson inquiry on the local press. Nearly half of all local newspaper editors believe that the inquiry into press standards has negatively affected their titles’ relationship with readers. More than a quarter (27 per cent) had received a threat from a public body to suspend advertising as a result of journalistic activity, such as a story being published, a query being made or a reporter attending a meeting."
Brian Cathcart, the executive director of Hacked Off, in a letter to regional newspaper editors, as reported by HoldtheFrontPage: “You may be concerned that any changes to the press regulation system could make your job harder and put extra burdens on regional and local papers. That’s what the Newspaper Society has been warning. I am writing to say that what the Newspaper Society has been telling you is not correct. The Royal Charter approved by all parties in Parliament in March is good for working journalists, good for the regional and local press – and good for the public."
Private Eye on coverage of Alex Ferguson's retirement: "Perhaps the most spectacular example of Stockholm syndrome was displayed by the BBC. Having been sent to Coventry by Ferguson for a full seven years after daring to expose his son Jason's activities as a football agent - a ban which ended only in 2011 - the corporation found the perfect pundit to pay tribute to Sir Alex on Radio Five Live. Step-up long-standing Fergie friend and fellow Labour stalwart Alastair Campbell, the man whose rabid desire to 'fuck Gilligan' over the BBC's WMD story in 2003 brought the corporation as close to extinction as it has ever been."
Piers Morgan @piersmorgan on Twitter: "'I've never held a grudge against the media, not my style' - Sir Alex Ferguson, who refused to speak to BBC for 5yrs."
BBC Sport Interactive editor Stuart Rowson @StuartRowson on Twitter: "Led by the #MUFC and Fergie coverage, last week was the biggest ever outside of the Olympics for @bbcsport - 17.3m unique UK browsers."
SubScribe by Gameoldgirl on Press Gazette: "The Ferguson retirement killed almost as many trees as the Iron Lady's death. Every daily newspaper, bar the Express, lost touch with reality in a race to be the most obsequious...This is daft. The Knight of the Hairdryer is a football manager. He is retiring, he has not died - and even if he had, this would still be over the top."
[£] = paywall
New survey on legal claims made against media
14 May 2013 - 10:28am
A new survey hoping to establish solid data on the nature and quantity of legal claims made against the media in the UK, is being conducted by Judith Townend, who runs the Meeja Law blog.
She says: "There is very little solid data about the nature and quantity of legal claims made against the media, including small bloggers. Because the majority of libel claims, for example, are believed to be resolved out of court, there is no complete record of disputes. In short, little is known about bloggers’ and journalists’ actual legal experiences and opinions."
The questionnaire can be found here:
- The questionnaire is open to all types of journalists and online writers who expect their readership to be predominantly based in England and/or Wales.
- It should take between 10 and 30 minutes to complete, depending on your experiences and views. Some questions require an answer so you can be taken to the next relevant question.
- All data will be collected anonymously with no identification of organisations or individuals.
