Gaza
International Federation of Journalists general secretary Anthony Bellanger, on his IFJ blog: “Never before has the profession of journalism seen such a massacre in its ranks. The International Federation of Journalists has recorded no comparable death toll since its formation [in 1926], neither during the Second World War, nor in Vietnam, Korea, Syria, Afghanistan or Iraq. Gaza has become the worst graveyard for journalists in contemporary history.”
Committee to Protect Journalists regional director Sara Qudah, after Al Jazeera Gaza correspondent Anas al-Sharif and five other journalists were killed in an air strike: “If Israel can kill the most prominent Gazan journalist, then it can kill anyone. The world needs to see these deadly attacks on journalists inside Gaza, as well as its censorship of journalists in Israel and the West Bank, for what they are: a deliberate and systematic attempt to cover up Israel’s actions.”
An Israel Defence Force spokesman claimed al-Sharif was: “A terrorist operating under the guise of a journalist.”
Malak A Tantesh, Guardian correspondent in Gaza: “I have to keep going to keep telling the world, so they keep us in their minds. If I stop and the other journalists stop sending the news from Gaza, maybe the world will forget us completely.”
Trump vs the media
Donald Trump on Truth Social about suing the Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch for $10 billion over the newspaper’s report that his name was on a 2003 birthday greeting for Jeffrey Epstein: “We have just filed a powerhouse lawsuit against everyone involved in publishing the false, malicious, defamatory, fake news ‘article’ in the useless ‘rag’ that is The Wall Street Journal. I hope Rupert and his ‘friends’ are looking forward to the many hours of depositions and testimonies they will have to provide in this case.”
Jimmy Kimmel on Trump: “It’s not just comedy. He’s gunning for our journalists. He is suing them, he’s bullying them. They want to pick and choose what the news is. I know that’s not as interesting as muzzling a comedian, but it’s so important to have a free press and it is nuts that we aren’t paying more attention to it.”
George Clooney interviewed on 60 minutes: “When the other three estates fail, when the judiciary and the executive and the legislative branches fail us, the fourth estate has to succeed. ABC has just settled a lawsuit with the Trump administration. And CBS News is in the process … We’re seeing this idea of using government to scare or fine or use corporations — to make journalists smaller.”
Film maker and journalist Cameron Crowe, interviewed in the Guardian, about his autobiography: “I hate seeing journalism marginalised — you know, ‘Can we get rid of these journalists, they’re the enemy of the people?’ No, they are the people.”
Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene after being asked a question by Sky News’ Martha Kelner: “We don’t give a crap about your opinion and your reporting. Why don’t you go back to your country?”
BBC director general Tim Davie in a statement on his resignation in the wake of criticism of Panorama editing Donald Trump’s speech: “While not being the only reason, the current debate around BBC News has understandably contributed to my decision. Overall the BBC is delivering well, but there have been some mistakes made and as director general, I have to take ultimate responsibility.”
The Pope
Pope Leo XIV in an audience with journalists: “Let us disarm communication of all prejudice and resentment, fanaticism and even hatred; let us free it from aggression. We do not need loud, forceful communication, but rather communication that is capable of listening and of gathering the voices of the weak who have no voice.”
AI
Nikkei, the owner of the Financial Times, on why it filed a lawsuit, alongside The Asahi Shimbun newspaper, accusing Perplexity AI of copyright infringement: “This course of Perplexity’s actions amounts to large-scale, ongoing ‘free riding’ on article content that journalists from both companies have spent immense time and effort to research and write, while Perplexity pays no compensation. If left unchecked, this situation could undermine the foundation of journalism, which is committed to conveying facts accurately, and ultimately threaten the core of democracy.”
Dominic Ponsford in Press Gazette: “It is not surprising that AI tools can be trained to read websites, fabricate press releases and then shower journalists with pitches. It is shocking that this low-quality content is being published by some of our biggest and most established news brands.”
Martin Ashplant, product development & operations director at PA media, in InPublishing: “AI will increasingly handle the more routine and repeating tasks which journalists have historically been asked to do… If done right, AI can be the facilitator of more productive editorial teams which empower journalists to do even more impactful work.”
Mainstream
Channel Four’s Matt Frei, giving the Steve Hewlett lecture: “In this tribal landscape of opposing versions of information, we are increasingly mocked for being ‘mainstream’. Mainstream: how did that even become an insult? It’s like the word ‘liberal’. Liberal has become an insult in the nation that has enshrined liberty in its own hallowed constitution. Instead of ducking and making excuses and pulling our punches we should wear ‘mainstream’ as a badge of honour. To swim in the mainstream is still better than to thrash around in the gutter on either side.”
Media freedom
The Times in a leader on the super injunction that stopped reporting of the Afghan data leak: “In terms of free speech, the superinjunction is a weapon of mass destruction. No government should be allowed to employ one again.”
Sean O’Neill in The Times after Reform councillors in Nottingham banned the Nottingham Post: “This is a dangerous path which raises questions about the nature of the party. I wonder, when they come to negotiate their multimillion-pound immigration deal with the Taliban, if Reform leaders will seek tips from Kabul’s tyrannical mullahs on how best to deal with pesky journalists.”
No checks
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announcing the social media company, which owns Facebook and Instagram, would stop working with third-party fact-checkers: “After Trump first got elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote nonstop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy. We tried in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth, but the fact checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the US.”
Prince Harry apology
Sun publisher News Group Newspapers in an apology to Prince Harry: “NGN offers a full and unequivocal apology to the Duke of Sussex for the serious intrusion by The Sun between 1996 and 2011 into his private life, including incidents of unlawful activities carried out by private investigators working for The Sun. NGN also offers a full and unequivocal apology to the Duke of Sussex for the phone hacking, surveillance and misuse of private information by journalists and private investigators instructed by them at the News of the World.”
Marie Colvin
The Sunday Times in a leader after the French authorities issued arrest warrants against former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and members of his regime over the targeted killing of the paper’s foreign correspondent Marie Colvin and French photographer Rémi Ochlik: “He and his officials will now be arrested and sent to be tried in France for war crimes and crimes against humanity if they cross into the West. That may be no time soon, but it was 13 years between the indictment and arrest of the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic for genocide. He is now serving a life sentence in jail. The arrest warrants should remind us that the fight for justice for Marie Colvin continues.”
Andrew Norfolk
Tony Gallagher, the editor of The Times, on the paper’s reporter Andrew Norfolk who died aged 60 in May: “Andrew was, without doubt, one of the greatest investigative reporters of our or any age. His tireless work exposing the evils of the predominantly Asian grooming gangs in and around towns in the north of England led to long overdue acknowledgement of the crimes, after the people who had been in a position to put a stop to it for years chose to look the other way.”
Clickbait
Mirror journalists in a letter to management: “Page-view targets do not reflect the nature and value of work carried out, particularly impacting on the road reporters eg. cultivating contacts, long-term projects and working away from the office to source exclusives. Individual targets will encourage clickbait as already seen on Reach’s regional titles. Clickbait undermines quality journalism.”
Liz lettuce preserved
Ellie Groom, the British Film Institute’s national archive curator, on the BFI preserving the Daily Star’s livestream of a lettuce which outlasted Liz Truss’s reign as Prime Minister: “The Daily Star’s video livestream was a seminal moment in British political history and in the story of online moving image. It was a brilliantly conceived satirical stunt that went viral and beyond, and over the course of a few short days as pressure mounted on Liz Truss to resign, it had a real influence.”
Future
Les Hinton on his blog after attending a Future of News conference: “I remember in the mid-1990s, when one presenter spoke with such shining confidence about the durable future of printed newspapers that the audience cheered him. That speaker was me, so I know what it’s like to get it wrong.”
Maggots
Former Attorney General Sir Geoffrey Cox, speaking at a Free Speech Union event: “Journalists are like maggots — if you put them on gangrenous wounds, they will excavate the corruption and leave healthy tissue. I would prefer to live in a world with plenty of them than none at all.”
Observer sale
James Harding, new editor-in-chief of The Observer after it was sold by the Guardian to Tortoise Media: “We believe in the paper. We are not only committed to print, we want to improve it… We’re independent. We don’t have ties to any big media company; our investors have signed up to the principle of editorial independence, and none has a controlling stake.”
The Lady’s not for publication
Jeremy Leslie, founder of magCulture, quoted in the Guardian, on the decision to stop publishing The Lady magazine, launched in 1885: “In today’s world, you need to address your niche — and the problem for The Lady is that their niche evaporated.”
Picture credits: Donald Trump: Daniel Torok, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons; Jimmy Kimmel: Erin Scott, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons; George Clooney: Bryan Berlin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Marjorie Taylor Greene: U.S. House of Representatives, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons; Pope Leo XIV: Edgar Beltrán, The Pillar, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Matt Frei: Chatham House, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Mark Zuckerberg: The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
This article was first published in InPublishing magazine. If you would like to be added to the free mailing list to receive the magazine, please register here.
