Editors kneel before Harry and MoD
The establishment is fond of blaming the media for the public’s cynicism about politics, and particularly its opposition to war. Blair waged a concerted campaign to bully the media in the name of “balance” and “impartiality”.
The collusion of senior media editors in the blackout on Prince Harry in Helmand reveals how specious this argument is. Rather than questioning the government’s war in Afghanistan, the media’s proprietors and controllers conspired to give the military a propaganda coup, boosting the notion that Britain is fighting a glamorous and just war.
As a result, more young men will join the army to fight: “They have just used Harry as propaganda to promote and glorify a war which, in the end, is going to be found to be a terrible mistake,” said Anthony Philippson, whose soldier son James died in Afghanistan.
As a result, thousands more Afghanis will die, blown to pieces by bombs from the same air strikes directed by the Prince on his “Kill TV”.
Eighteen months ago the MoD faced a potential revolt in the army. General Sir Richard Dannatt told the Mail that Britain faced losing the war in Afghanistan. The MoD lashed out Blair’s favourite scapegoat for the problems – the media – and launched a campaign to regain the media initiative.
First the MoD banned ITN from embedding reporters with troops. Then it allowed the 15 military personnel captured by Iran to sell their stories to the press. And it banned soldiers from blogging and speaking in public. By the end of last year the MoD had succeeded in re-imposing strict censorship on the media in Afghanistan.
Now senior editors have handed the military establishment a gem. As Peter Wilby has explained, the Prince Harry story “was a PR stunt, from beginning to end”. By lapping it up, editors “dealt another blow to genuinely independent journalism and to the long-term credibility of the media”.
It is a grim irony that, as the Harry story flooded through the media last week, the government gagged the former SAS soldier Ben Griffin, preventing him from speaking out about UK involvement in illegal renditions.
For some well-known journalists, this stuck in the craw. Jon Snow of Channel 4 News asked some probing and critical questions about the media’s collusion on Harry. As a result, however, Snow became the target of a concerted campaign of “flak” in the Mail, Telegraph, Telegraph again, Evening Standard, and the Times, including accusations that he is “left-wing” and “unpatriotic”.
If you haven’t done so already, please write to Channel 4 News – email news@channel4.com – to back Jon Snow’s independent and professional journalism.
