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Peter Wilby

23 quotes

• “[Y]ou may be sure that, if the Soviet Union were still a reality and a threat, the debt crisis, which now affects some 50 countries and has reached previously unimagined levels (some countries have to use a quarter of their export earnings to service debt), would not exist.”

  Peter Wilby (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The death of the Soviet Union also deprived the global poor of something more intangible: not exactly hope, perhaps, but the sense of an alternative, of possibility.”

  Peter Wilby (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “[T]he US government and media (along with their British cheerleaders) themselves raise the ideological stakes when they claim that we have seen attacks on freedom and democracy. That is one way of putting it: another is to say that these attacks, using deeply symbolic targets, have hit a civilisation that has grown complacent, selfish and in some respects decadent.”

  Peter Wilby (born 1944) first seen 2017 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: In buildings thought indestructible", New Statesman (17 September 2017).

• “When I watched the murderous attacks on New York and Washington, my first reactions were of incredulity horror and sympathy for the victims and their families But when I came to write my weekly editorial for The New Statesman the following day (knowing that most readers would not see it until that Friday), I thought I should raise wider issues. I suggested that billions of poor people throughout the world would support the attacks because they blamed America for their plight and saw no alternative but to strike out in rage.”

  Peter Wilby (born 1944) first seen 2001 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Listen before the missiles fly", Evening Standard (26 September 2001), p. 53

• “For our issue dated 14 January, the New Statesman published a cover showing the Star of David standing on a Union Jack, with the words: "A kosher conspiracy?”

  Peter Wilby (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “They [Jews] no longer routinely suffer gross or violent discrimination; indeed, in the US and Europe at least, Jews today are probably safer than most minorities.”

  Peter Wilby (born 1944) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The New Statesman and anti-Semitism", New Statesman (11 February 2002)

• “If it had been known at the time that he'd got 'previous convictions' the context of the case would have been very different.”

  Peter Wilby (born 1944) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Quoted in "Major's shame over affair leaves Currie indignant", The Guardian (30 September 2002)

• “Is Johann Hari, the Independents twentysomething columnist, a twerp? Does he write twaddle? Since I brought Hari into journalism - I gave him his first job, on the NS - I rather hope not.”

  Peter Wilby (born 1944) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Who's the twerp and who writes twaddle?", New Statesman (26 June 2006)

• “To wide indignation on Fleet Street, Sir Ian suggested newspapers' blanket and emotive coverage of such cases, compared with the cursory treatment of black children who go missing in the inner cities, betrayed institutional racism. Was he right? Perhaps it's not racism exactly but, if we are honest, the story is enhanced if the child is blonde, blue-eyed and nicely dressed, though no paper would dare to spell out the awful subtext: that a child who looks attractive to readers will also attract a potential abuser.”

  Peter Wilby (born 1944) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The nursery-tale treatment of a real-life nightmare", The Guardian (14 May 2007). This article on the media coverage of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann was removed from the website on 1 September 2023.

• “Even the belief that the Daily Express is a hopeless newspaper that couldn't tell you the time of day - one of the few certainties in a turbulent world - took a knock.”

  Peter Wilby (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “When I read last week that the Press Complaints Commission had censured FHM magazine for printing a photograph of a topless 14-year-old girl, I looked to the press for coverage and comment. Surely, I thought, newspapers that are so determined to root out "evil" paedophiles and to denounce "pervs" who view child pornography would have something to say. ... There was not a word, for example, in the Sun, whose editor, Rebekah Wade, has always been such a sturdy opponent of paedophilia. That wouldn't be - would it? - because the red-tops fear they might themselves be caught out one day.”

  Peter Wilby (born 1944) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Never mind the facts, this is showbusiness", The Guardian (17 September 2007).

• “My reactions to 9/11 were, from the start, different from everyone else's. As we watched on the office television, somebody said with horror, "I can't believe this is happening in Manhattan!" To which, I thought, why not? Many countries had, at some point in the previous 90 years, experienced the effects of aerial bombardment, sometimes from American forces. Why should we regard Americans as uniquely immune from such barbarity? The US, after all, had become the world's sole great power and it revelled in this status.”

  Peter Wilby (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Almost anybody should be thankful that the US, not the Soviet Union, won the cold war. But a dominant or imperial power, however benign or enlightened, will be resented. The violent 9/11 attacks were not right - they were a criminal atrocity - but they were hardly surprising.”

  Peter Wilby (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Some of these thoughts, expressed more clumsily than I later wished, found their way into the New Statesman leader that, as editor, I wrote barely 24 hours after the attacks.”

  Peter Wilby (born 1944) first seen 2011 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Why the rich want more tax, Tory tape and the story of that leader", New Statesman (5 September 2011)

• “[A]buse is deeply distressing and highly damaging to the victim. It is not made significantly more so because the perpetrator holds a powerful political position or wears black robes. Such claims excite journalists and attract more public attention; they do not help victims.”

  Peter Wilby (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Some "victims" will make false allegations, often prompted by lawyers, in the hope of substantial payments.”

  Peter Wilby (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “[W]hile those who allege abuse should be heard, accepting what they say as self-evidently true is not better than dismissing it as childish fantasy. It is just another form of not listening, and relying instead on prejudices and preconceptions. It also leads to a new set of victims. Abused children may suffer mental illness and suicidal thoughts. But so may those falsely accused.”

  Peter Wilby (born 1944) first seen 2012 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Media hysteria creates a new set of victims", The Guardian (11 November 2012)

• “What makes a great journalist?”

  Peter Wilby (born 1944) first seen 2022 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: A farewell to Ian Jack – a peerless reporter of British life", New Statesman (2 November 2022).

• “[Editorial on the September 11 attacks published shortly afterwards] American bond traders, you may say, are as innocent and as undeserving of terror as Vietnamese or Iraqi peasants. Well, yes and no. Yes, because such large-scale carnage is beyond justification, since it can never distinguish between the innocent and the guilty. No, because Americans, unlike Iraqis and many others in poor countries, at least have the privileges of democracy and freedom that allow them to vote and speak in favour of a different order. If the United States often seems a greedy and overweening power, that is partly because its people have willed it. They preferred George Bush to Al Gore and both to Ralph Nader.”

  Peter Wilby (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “We (or, more precisely, I) got it wrong. The cover was not intended to be anti-Semitic; the New Statesman is vigorously opposed to racism in all its forms. But it used images and words in such a way as to create unwittingly the impression that the New Statesman was following an anti-Semitic tradition that sees the Jews as a conspiracy piercing the heart of the nation. I doubt very much that one single person was provoked into hatred of Jews by our cover. But I accept that a few anti-Semites (as some comments on our website, quickly removed, suggested) took aid and comfort when it appeared that their prejudices were shared by a magazine of authority and standing. Moreover, the cover upset very many Jews, who are right to feel that, in the fight against anti-Semitism in particular and racism in general, this magazine ought to be on their side.”

  Peter Wilby (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “[[Nick Cohen|[Nick] Cohen]] assures me that he has no intention of following [[Paul Johnson|[Paul] Johnson]]'s long political journey. Since he is a personal friend, whose journalism I admire (I hired him twice, once on the Independent on Sunday, once on the NS), I believe him. But I don't underestimate the sense of betrayal on the left. When the rest of the press was cheering on [[Tony Blair|[Tony] Blair]], particularly in new Labour's early days, Cohen was his most virulent critic and almost the only coherent voice asserting "real left" values. Now, in some eyes, he has deserted the cause when it needs him most.”

  Peter Wilby (born 1944) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: When lefties turn to the right", The Guardian (1 August 2005)

• “Teachers' unions advise members to avoid ever being alone with a pupil. Only close relatives (and not always they) dare show a child physical affection. Scouts and other youth organisations struggle to recruit volunteers. And I doubt that, if I were now 17, a young, single teacher would invite me to dine alone at her home. Since I had never previously dined out, I suppose that would be my loss. It is right that we now abhor child abuse and no longer tolerate abuse of authority for even low-level sexual gratification. But do we need to go so far? Can't we forbid the sex but still allow intimate relations between teachers and pupils, adults and children? Even as I write that sentence, I realise that "intimate relations" is itself ambiguous and that, no, we probably can't have our cake and eat it.”

  Peter Wilby (born 1944) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: It’s not on that all intimacy is off limits", Times Education Supplement (8 September 2006).

• “Unearthing journalists' faulty predictions and poor judgements is always enjoyable. To my delight, I once discovered that the Sun, in a fawning interview in 1973, described Gary Glitter (later imprisoned for sexual offences against children) as "the rock’n’roll daddy who makes little girls ask to see more of his hairy chest". So before anybody else finds out, I will reveal that, during my editorship, the NS ran an article under the headline "Max Clifford is a nice chap shock". We reported that Clifford, who has just been convicted of sexually abusing four girls, was a man of "private modesty . . . committed to public service" whose "personal life has been a paragon of virtue". Since this was in 2000, we don't even have the excuse that it was the 1970s.”

  Peter Wilby (born 1944) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Failing the teachers, misjudging Max Clifford and Thomas Piketty’s bestselling shelf-filler", New Statesman (8 May 2014; updated 24 June 2021).