Quotes of the week

It's been a good week for quotes. Here's my pick.

Nick Davies, at the NUJ Jobs Summit, on the public status (or lack of it) of journalists: "Being judged by people on the performance of Murdoch and Dacre is like all Transylvanians being judged on Dracula's behaviour. We have to fight back against it. Our position is similar to that in which gay men and women found themselves in the 1950s and 1960s. They were unable to orchestrate their political strength to change the law because they weren't liked, they were shunned."

Derry Journal NUJ chapel, on proposed job cuts: "The Derry Journal survived the Famine, but we fear it may not survive Johnston Press."

Sly Bailey on Digital Britain interim report: "Frankly time is running out. Regional newspaper publishers are facing the most challenging times in their history, mergers and combinations of newspaper groups offer the only chance of survival for some titles."

Greg Dyke on the influence of the Hutton Report (five years old this week) on the BBC: "On Iraq I don't think the BBC has been brave since then."


BBC director general Mark Thompson on BBC websites linking to Gaza Appeal: "This is a valid decision for news editors to make when reporting that the appeal is happening; as we know that many people will want more information about the appeal or donating to it. Providing them with that information in no way alters the fact that my decision - however controversial - was the correct one to preserve the BBC's impartiality."

Sun editor Rebekah Wade, giving the Hugh Cudlipp Lecture: "Newspaper pessimism is age old, nearly as old as some of the media commentators."

Former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie: "I used to have a business in Swansea and decided to make a "seagull visit" - fly in, s*** on the staff and fly back to my London office."

Wade on MacKenzie, answering a question after Hugh Cudlipp Lecture: "He's not allowed in Scotland...or the North."

Headline of the Week: The Sun on the 'Lords for hire' story : 'PEERS MORONS'

BBC not 'brave' in covering Iraq war ever since Hutton Report claims Greg Dyke

Former BBC director-general Greg Dyke said today that the highly critical Hutton Report and the legacy of the row over Andrew Gilligan's "sexed-up" dossier allegations has influenced the BBC's reporting of the war in Iraq.
Asked by presenter Steve Hewlett on today's BBC Radio 4's Media Show about the long term impact on the BBC of Hutton, published five years ago today, Dyke said:"On Iraq I don't think the BBC has been brave since then."
Dyke, who lost his job as a result of the dossier affair, also said: "I think when you look back now, I think although there were odd mistakes, the central thrust of what Gilligan said was true."
He said the fire turned on the BBC was a "trick" by Alastair Campbell to try and save his own job and because Campbell disliked the BBC because "it was one of the few bits of the media he couldn't control."