Murdoch’s ‘most humble day’ and the best media quotes of 2011

Jon Slattery is TheMediaBriefing’s resident columnist on local and national press matters and no one watches the comings and goings of the UK media scene more closely. Each week on his excellent blog Jon brings together the best quotes from the media jungle – and here are his picks of the quotes of 2011.

-- Rupert Murdoch to the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee hearing into phone hacking: “This is the most humble day of my life.”

-- Andy Coulson on leaving Downing Street: “I stand by what I’ve said about those events but when the spokesman needs a spokesman it’s time to move on.”

-- Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger on Coulson resigning: “This is the result of first class investigative reporting by one Guardian reporter, Nick Davies, sustained over a very long period of time. From the moment he revealed the secret payout to

-- Gordon Taylor in July 2009 it was obvious that Andy Coulson’s position was untenable. But this is not the end of the story by any means. There are many outstanding legal actions, and uncomfortable questions for others, including the police.”

-- Tom Watson MP to James Murdoch: “You must be the first Mafia boss in history who did not know he was running a criminal enterprise.”

-- Chase Carey, deputy chairman, president and chief operating officer, News Corporation: “We believed that the proposed acquisition of BSkyB by News Corporation would benefit both companies but it has become clear that it is too difficult to progress in this climate.”

-- James Murdoch on the decision to close the News of the World: “The good things the News of the World does, however, have been sullied by behaviour that was wrong. Indeed, if recent allegations are true, it was inhuman and has no place in our Company.The News of the World is in the business of holding others to account. But it failed when it came to itself.”

-- Rebekah Brooks to News of the World staff: “Worse revelations are yet to come and you will understand in a year why we closed the News of the World.”

-- Jon Gaunt on Question Time: “The wrong red-top has gone. Rebekah should go”.

-- News of the World political editor David Wooding: “The loss of the News of the World from our lives is a bombshell like the break-up of the Beatles, the collapse of Woolworths and the end of Concorde. Only this time, instead of reporting the story, we are it. Britain’s crooks, thieves, conmen and fakers won’t miss the News of the World. But everyone who loved a great story, well told, will.”

-- WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, speaking at Cambridge University: “While the internet has in some ways an ability to let us know to an unprecedented level what government is doing, and to let us co-operate with each other to hold repressive governments and repressive corporations to account, it is also the greatest spying machine the world has ever seen.”

-- Julian Assange’s legal team on the dangers of his extradition to the US: “Indeed, if Mr Assange were rendered to the USA, without assurances that the death penalty would not be carried out, there is a real risk that he could be made subject to the death penalty. It is well known that prominent figures have implied, if not stated outright, that Mr Assange should be executed.”

-- Reuters quotes official who attended a briefing given in late 2010 by US State Department officials: “We were told (the impact of WikiLeaks revelations) was embarrassing but not damaging.”

-- Greg Reardon, the boyfriend of Jo Yeates on coverage of her murder: “Jo’s life was cut short tragically but the finger-pointing and character assassination by social and news media of as yet innocent men has been shameful. It has made me lose a lot of faith in the morality of the British press and those that spend their time fixed to the internet in this modern age.”

--Roy Greenslade in Media Guardian: “It is time for the responsible, serious section of the British press to disengage from any coalition with the popular newspapers. The willingness to ignore their misconduct has led us all astray and increased the public’s lack of trust in all journalism.”

-- Andrew Alexander in the Daily Mail: “Every few years politicians succumb to the desire to impose codes of ethics on journalists. We have had three attempts in the past half century or so to achieve this by committee of inquiry without much result. David Cameron wants us to try again. It will be like grappling with a blancmange.”

-- Reed Business Information’s editorial development manager Adam Tinworth: “From now on, I’m a blogger not a journalist. Don’t want my credentials dragged down by association with newspaper hacks.”

-- Tim Rutten in the Los Angeles Times: “The Huffington Post is a brilliantly packaged product with a particular flair for addressing the cultural and entertainment tastes of its overwhelmingly liberal audience. To grasp its business model, though, you need to picture a galley rowed by slaves and commanded by pirates.”

-- Guardian editor-in-chef Alan Rusbridger: “By becoming a digital-first organisation we’re taking the next natural step, one which we believe all newspapers will eventually have to take.”

-- Mike Lockley, editor of the Chase Post, which is being closed by Trinity Mirror Midlands: “Times and technology change, people’s desire to know what’s happening in their community doesn’t. A town without its own weekly newspaper is a town without a heart.”

--Andrew Marr in the Daily Mail about his privacy injunction: “I did not come into journalism to go around gagging journalists. Am I embarrassed by it? Yes. Am I uneasy about it? Yes. But at the time there was a crisis in my marriage and I believed there was a young child involved. I also had my own family to think about, and I believed this story was nobody else’s business.”

-- Ex-News of the World journalist Paul McMullan at the Leveson Inquiry: “Privacy is for paedos, no-one else needs it.”

-- Blogger Guido Fawkes’ advice to celebs on Sky News: “If you don’t want to be on the front pages then don’t pay hookers to stick dildos up your bum.” Adam Boulton moved swiftly on.

-- Paul Lewis in the Guardian on covering the riots: “The first portal for communicating what we saw was Twitter. It enabled us to deliver real-time reports from the scene, but more importantly enabled other users of Twitter to provide constant feedback and directions to troublespots. While journalists covering previous riots would chase ambulances to find the frontline, we followed what people on social media told us. By the end of the week, I had accumulated 35,000 new Twitter followers.”

-- Lord Justice Leveson on his inquiry into media ethics: “I want this inquiry to mean something. I am very concerned that it should not simply form a footnote in some professor of journalism’s analysis of the history of the 21st century while it gathers dust."

-- Teaser of the year from MailOnline: ‘How I stole my husband’s sperm in the middle of the night by Liz Jones’.