Media “bored to tears by Iraq”
Vicki Wood, columnist for the Mail and Telegraph, let slip the commentariat’s attitude to the Iraq war in the Telegraph (Oct 26), when she wrote that three years ago “the world was not yet bored to tears by the unending mess in Iraq”.
This is a real problem for the anti-war movement – the notion among senior editors and managers that “we’ve done Iraq” and that it’s time to move on. Here they are just mimicking Blair’s oft-stated desire to “draw a line” under Iraq.
It means reporters and documentary makers can’t get important investigative work published or broadcast.
Of course, the public’s interest in Iraq isn’t constant: the Financial Times noted recently (Oct 23) that “the war in Iraq has ceased to be the US’s hot political issue”
But that is partly because politicians drop the issue in a concerted attempt to divert attention away from the war, and also because the corporate media takes their lead and gets “bored” with the subject.
