Media Workers Against the War

Freelance journalist Shiv Malik must hand over his source material on terrorism to the police, the High Court ruled last week, slamming Malik for daring to take the case to a judicial review - and forcing him to pay costs.

Malik’s crucial test case succeeded in reining in the police, who had raided his house in March in search of his notes. The court’s main ruling two weeks ago spelt out that the police have no right to conduct speculative “fishing expeditions” to force journalists to hand over their research.

But the case has starkly revealed how the terror laws mean journalists must go to the authorities if they suspect that a source has information about “terrorism”.

Given the broad-brush definition of terrorism in the Terrorism Act 2006 – which includes “glorifying” terror and possessing terrorist materials without the intention of committing an offence – the latest ruling means many Muslims will perceive journalists as a direct extension of the police. Anyone with genuine information about the terrorist milieu will have to weigh up the risk that talking to a reporter is like talking to the cops.

The court’s first ruling, however, was welcomed by Malik, who stressed how it circumscribed police powers. He told Free Press: “It’s a victory for common sense in that, from the wider perspective, we can protect confidential sources – that’s a big victory.

“The High Court said production orders are allowed, but in my case they really do have to be precisely drafted, the police can’t just go on fishing expeditions. Protecting journalists’ sources should be paramount, and now the High Court has said even in terrorism cases journalists are allowed to maintain confidential sources.”

The NUJ also emphasised how the initial ruling sent a clear signal to police that they can’t see journalists as “simply another tool of intelligence gathering”. Speaking outside the High Court after the ruling was announced, general secretary Jeremy Dear said that Greater Manchester Police had “failed to recognise the special nature of journalistic material. Rather than take the time to consider what information they really needed, the police went fishing, hoping a general order would dredge up something of use.”

Malik is an established freelance who has written extensively on terrorism for national newspapers and magazines. He is working on a book with the former Islamist Hassan Butt, who is linked to a forthcoming terrorism trail in Manchester in the autumn. Greater Manchester Police, who raided Malik’s home in March in pursuit of his notes, have also served draft production orders on the BBC, the Sunday Times, Prospect magazine and CBS demanding that they hand over materials they believe to be connected with the case.

Malik’s High Court appeal is the first major test of the application to journalism of the Terrorism Act 2000, sections 19 and 38B (the latter was added in 2001) of which make it a criminal offence to withhold information. Formerly police had to satisfy a judge that the information they sought from a journalist was closely related to a “serious offence” – the 2000 Act contains no such restriction.

Malik said: “This makes it almost impossible for journalists working in the field of terrorism. It’s been a scythe hanging over our necks since it was enacted in 2000. Journalists in the field have been breaking the law and hoping they won’t get prosecuted.”

He believes the issue came to a head because the police decided he would be in no position to defend himself, so they imposed a wide-ranging production order. But the NUJ and the Sunday Times agreed to pay his costs.

There is a maliciousness in the police attack on Malik. As the court ruling states, the police interest in Malik is in what he can tell them about Hassan Butt, and not in whether he has committed offences under sections 19 or 38B. However, according to the Court, on May 9 Butt was arrested and extensively interviewed by police; he told them his earlier public statements about involvement in Al-Qaeda were untrue. He has now been released without charge.

The case shows that journalists face enormous difficulties researching the roots of Islamist extremism in Britain. As a result, policies aimed at preventing terrorism will come to rely even further on the shadowy secret services and the ill-informed prejudices of the Murdoch press.

Moreover, the line between legitimate support for resistance to western intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan and supporting “terrorism” will be further blurred, increasing the stigma attached to the Muslim community, where hostility to government foreign policy is strongest.

A range of high profile figures and organisations have supported Malik’s case. On March 19 leading figures from journalism and civil liberties organisations, including Jonathan Dimbleby and Shami Chakrabarti, signed a letter to the Times warning of its implications.

Dave Crouch
A version of this article will shortly appear in Free Press, www.cpbf.org.uk

Dear Colleagues,

Alarming changes are taking place in the BBC World Service structure and we are asking for your help.

The management has decided that 50% of language services should be transferred to countries where the language is spoken. As the law in most of those countries does not allow foreign media organisations to operate locally, the BBC is setting up private companies instead - BBC Pakistan Ltd., BBC India Ltd., BBC Nepal, etc.

Although preparations for offshoring different languages have been going on for the last 3 to 4 years, management neither took staff into confidence nor informed the unions of their plans. Hindi and Urdu services were told only a couple of months ago that 80% of Hindi and 50% of Urdu transmission and staff are to be transferred to BBC India and BBC Islamabad. Similar plans are in the pipeline for Nepali Service and there are signs that Bengali service will follow suit. Needless to say terms and conditions will be down-graded, and staffing levels will/may be cut.

The management argues that in the face of growing media competition we need to be closer to our audience. This is completely false premise and an extremely risky experiment which will mean moving independent journalists into the control zones of the governments of those countries and obliging them to comply with restrictive media regimes in those countries.

BBC World Service has built its reputation as the most independent and trustworthy international news organisation without its 32 language services ‘being close’ to their audiences. This is the most important issue in our campaign to stop offshoring plans. BBC World Service has earned respect and trust of its audience all over the world precisely because it was far removed from the political pressure of those countries and is perceived to be independent and unbiased. Programmes being broadcast from local stations and conforming to local media laws and political demands will not have the same authority, and BBC’s status as the world leader will be damaged for good.

Please support our campaign. Please discuss it at your next chapel/branch meeting; let people know in your communities, especially those from other Asian sub-continent; invite us to your meeting. And write to World Service management expressing your concern and challenging the wisdom of their plan, which is really about cost cutting.

You can write to:
Nigel Chapman – Director BBC World (nigel.chapman@bbc.co.uk)
Richard Sambrook – Director Global news
Thomson – Director General BBC
Sir Michael Lyons – Chairman BBC Trust

David Miliband - Foreign Secretary
Ede House
143 Westoe Road
South Shields
NE33 3PD
Telephone
(0191) 456 8910
Email: milibandd@parliament.uk

Thank you for your help.
Arjum Wajid
MoC
NUJ South Asia Chapel

For the first time a mainstream editor – who just happens also to be a professional media-watcher – has written a book attacking the Iraq war coverage by the US corporate press. The author of “So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits, and the President Failed on Iraq” is Greg Mitchell, editor of Editor & Publisher – the US equivalent of the UK Press Gazette. The book is an edited collection of his extraordinary E&P columns from 2002 to 2007 about the war, which together constitute a powerful indictment of the big American newspapers.

Mitchell’s writing shows what comment should really look like – in contrast to the shallow hand-wringing that often passes for op-eds and editorials on Iraq in the British press. From the very start of the invasion he has raged at the media’s triumphalism and its downplaying of the loss of life. After Bush landed on an aircraft carrier on May 1, 2003, to declare “mission accomplished”, Mitchell slammed the New York Times’ coverage.

Four years later he was attacking the troop “surge” from the outset, condemning it as “a tragic escalation” of the conflict. When the US began blaming Iran for the mess, Mitchell wrote a column entitled: “We’ve been through this movie before”.

Over and over Mitchell comes back to the fact that a huge percentage of Americans believe Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attacks – a terrible condemnation of the US media. On the third anniversary of the invasion he wrote that pundits who agitated for an attack on Iraq should be “on their knees begging the American public for forgiveness”.

In one of his columns in April 2004 he made the first mentions of the deaths of US soldiers Casey Sheehan and Michael Mitchell – Casey’s mother and Michael’s father became prominent campaigners against the war. Another of Mitchell’s themes is suicides in the US army, the reasons for which he investigates to reveal the sheer awfulness confronting soldiers in Iraq. This has been largely ignored by the British media, although last year the Ministry of Defence disclosed that 17 serving personnel had killed themselves after witnessing the horrors of conflict in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Mitchell repeatedly castigates the refusal of newspaper editors to call for troops to be withdrawn, despite opinion polls showing this was a major, and even majority, opinion in the country. This changed fleetingly with a Los Angeles Times editorial in May 2007 entitled “Bring Them Home“, stating “The time has come to leave.” Two months later the New York Times stated boldly: “It is time for the United States to leave Iraq”.

Even the best of the British newspapers, however, evade the issue of getting the troops out. In leader columns to mark the fifth anniversary of invasion in March, only one British national newspaper talked about British and American troops leaving Iraq, but even then the Guardian said merely that it was “time to listen” to Iraqi opinion, calling on the next US president to “set a date” for withdrawal and talking about the “gains” made by presence of British troops. The Independent published a blistering attack on the war, but sadly evaded the question of troops. Otherwise:

• The Murdoch papers praised the troops’ presence;
• The FT said Iraq should be broken up;
• The Telegraph attacked Obama for being “dangerously naive” to talk about ending the occupation
• The Sunday Telegraph published an op-ed by Richard Perle (!);
• And the Observer in an extraordinary editorial called for more military intervention around the world.

It’s important to note, however, that Mitchell’s core argument is for better journalism, not “anti-war journalism”. He writes: “Most of those against the war did not ask for a media ‘crusade’ against invasion, merely that the press stick to the facts and provide a balanced assessment: in other words, that [journalists do their] minimum journalistic duty.”

Mitchell’s book is also hugely witty and entertaining: for a taste of this, see his recent column on an evening of satire at a White House dinner for journalists.

Remember, you read it here first – the British media have so far ignored the book.

Robert Fisk sees the recent eruption of conflict in Beirut as a “proxy” war between Washington and Tehran. Add this observation to US accusations that Hezbollah is training Iraqi militants in Iran, and the American military’s promised dossier on Iran’s role in the Iraq war, and you can see that the old drumbeat of war on Iran is growing louder again.

Hilary Clinton’s shocking comment that the US would “obliterate” Iran if it should “foolishly consider” launching an attack on Israel is pandering to a broad constituency that wants to hear tough rhetoric about Iran. Clinton stood by her remarks this month: “I don’t think it’s time to equivocate. [Iran has] to know they would face massive retaliation. That is the only way to rein them in.”

Clinton has added to the chorus of neocon voices seeking an excuse to bomb Iran, including major media outlets. A disgraceful Washington Post editorial on April 13 talked of Iran as “a growing menace that the Bush administration, and its successor, cannot afford to ignore”. In Britain, the appropriately named Con Coughlin, the Telegraph’s political editor, is once again publishing British and US military reports on Iran’s “lethal meddling on the battlefields of the war on terror”, under the headline: “Why the West moves closer to bombing Iran“.

But it’s not all going the neo-cons’ way. In the first week of May the US faced major embarrassment when a cache of supposedly Iranian weapons seized in the Shiite holy city of Karbala turned out to be no such thing. The US military had just taken the word for it of local Karbala police. In fact, the US and Iran are on the same side in southern Iraq, both fearful of the Sadr resistance. Even the Iraqi government has distanced itself from the US talk of conflict with Iran.

The website Spinwatch has started an extremely useful blog by the retired US air force colonel Sam Gardiner which aims to follow the media’s twists and turns on Iran. Gardiner has performed extensive analysis of the media coverage before the war on Iraq, during the war and during the occupation as well as of the statements of Administration officials.

So don’t just watch this space for alerts on warmongering towards Iran – watch Gardiner’s too.

The Today programme’s reporting of the assault on Basra and Baghdad’s Sadr City by the Iraqi government, backed by US and British troops, tanks and warplanes, has descended to the base assertion that our side is good, their side is bad.

Evan Davis, Today’s new presenter, introduced a section on Basra on May 2 which opened with an resident of Basra describing Moqtada Sadr’s Mahdi Army as “very ill-educated, basically criminals” and welcoming the renewed invasion by western forces. Davis then turned to Major General Barney White-Spunner, the UK’s senior officer in Iraq: “So it sounds like fairly good news from Basra?”

“That’s certainly our view,” White-Spunner replied. Davis pressed for more good news: “Are the gains sustainable, I suppose is the question isn’t it? Or do you think if you don’t get to mend the sewers very well people are going to become discontented again and we’ll start getting back to more street disorder?”

White-Spunner took his cue and talked unchallenged about the “excellent work” UK troops were doing, about “development”, “aid distribution”, “humanitarian work”, “sensitivity” to local needs and so on. The interview was almost as cosy as editorial meetings of The Field magazine or Baily’s Hunting Directory, where White-Spunner works when not occupying foreign lands.

Meanwhile, Iraqi government troops were parading the bodies of dead Mahdi fighters like trophies and beating up prisoners. On the same day as White-Spunner’s Radio 4 interview a huge crowd of Shia Muslims protested against Iraq’s US-backed prime minister al-Maliki in Baghdad’s Sadr City, urging him to end the bloody confrontation with the Mahdi Army. Since late March, there has been a surge of air strikes in Iraq: the military has fired more than 200 Hellfire missiles in the capital, compared with just six fired in the previous three months.

The British media routinely portrays supporters of Moqtada Sadr as “militia”, “extremists”, “men in black”, “rogue gunmen” and “death squads”. Yet, up until last September, Moqtada Sadr’s group was part of the Iraqi government. The US offensive has relied heavily on the Iran-backed Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, many members of the armed wing of which, the Badr Organisation, have been battling the Sadr-led resistance.

The US demonises the Mahdi Army because Sadr is resolutely opposed to the occupation. Moreover, many Shia view the Mahdi in part as a charitable organisation and are often grateful for the security it provides. Sadr’s organisation gives money to families of Shia dead and injured, resettles displaced families and offers funds for any victim of American weapons in Sadr City. Evoking comparisons with Hezbollah, Sadr’s movement “has established itself as the main service provider in the country,” says a recent report by Refugees International. Every month the Mahdi army distributes rations of rice, cooking oil, sugar, tea and other staples, much of it provided by the Iraqi Red Crescent, to thousands of Baghdad’s poorest families.

As the Financial Times put it last month, the clashes between the government and the Mahdi army reveal a class division at the heart of the Shia community. Sadr represents the angry, dispossessed Shia masses of Iraq who suffered under Saddam. “What we’ve seen over the past few weeks is a real class struggle open up with no political means for bridging the gap,” the International Crisis Group told the FT. “Sadr’s followers don’t care if he’s an ayatollah or not. They just want him to win for them the wealth and prosperity they feel should be theirs,” a US official told the paper.

The British media’s last line of attack is that British troops are defending women’s rights. But abuse of women was widespread in Basra before the British were driven out of the city last autumn. The US-backed government has brought right-wing Islamists to power, unleashing attacks against women.

The resistance in battling the occupation. But for the BBC’s flagship news programme our boys are just doing good, building sewers and helping reconstruction. This is far from the case – the British and US armies are building a sewer of bloodshed and sectarian hatred in Iraq.

Hidden by the mainstream UK media, the past three weeks has brought wonderful news – the freeing of Sami al-Haj, al-Jazeera cameraman, from Guantanamo, and Bilal Hussein, award-winning AP cameraman, from Iraq. The Guardian and the Press Gazette appear to be the only UK national news outlet to have covered their release. The Guardian’s Richard Norton-Taylor wrote a brilliant cover story on Sami for the MediaGuardian: “The other Alan Johnston“. You can also watch Sami al-Haj’s remarkable speech from his hospital bed on the day of his release.

But why the deafening silence in the British media? The release of Bilal Hussein, a member of the AP team that won a Pulitzer Prize for photography in 2005, held without charge in Iraq for two years, went almost entirely unnoticed. When the British journalist Richard Butler was mercifully freed after in Iraq for two months, his rescue was given widespread coverage.

When the BBC’s Alan Johnston was held in Gaza last year, there were calls from throughout the international press and political community for his release. One of those appeals came from Sami Al-Haj, who imprisoned without charge in Guantánamo since June 2002 after being seized on his way to Afghanistan the previous December to work on an assignment.

Johnston responded to Al-Haj’s plight by writing an open letter in support of a fair trial; the ex-BBC documentary journalist Rageh Omaar also spoke out about him. However, unlike Johnston, this Sudanese-born journalist, received little sustained support or coverage from his colleagues in the media. This is despite the fact that he is the only journalist in Guantánamo and he was offered no opportunity to refute the US government’s charge of being an “enemy combatant”. Rageh Omaar, speaking to Guardian journalists in January 2008, said: “If you look at the response to the kidnapping of Alan Johnston in Gaza and compare it to the over-whelming, deafening silence in Sami’s case, it’s completely shaken my confidence in the notion of journalistic solidarity.”

From January 7, 2007, until his release al-Haj was on a hunger strike to secure his liberty or a free and fair trial. He was force-fed through tubes into his stomach, his weight plummeted and health deteriorated, with reports of poor sight, heart and kidney problems. Al-Haj’s supporters also claimed he suffered physical and mental abuse, including the withdrawal of medication.

The evidence against al-Haj has never been presented in public. Some see his imprisonment as part of a wider US campaign against al-Jazeera itself. His brother Asim al-Haj, speaking to Democracy Now in January 2008, said: “Sami al-Haj is a victim of a political operation against al-Jazeera, which Washington does not approve of. And as evidence of this is the fact that he was interrogated 130 times. And during these times, the interrogations were all about al-Jazeera and alleged relations between al-Jazeera and al-Qaeda.”

Al-Haj’s British lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, director of legal action charity Reprieve, also believed this to be the case and confirmed that virtually all Sami’s interrogations were an attempt to “prove” a link between al-Jazeera and al-Qaeda. He also said al-Haj told him he had been offered release if he was prepared to spy on his colleagues at al-Jazeera. On Sami’s release, his lawyer told the BBC: “We’ve disproved everything they threw at him.”

Reprieve also released two sketches by the political cartoonist Lewis Peake, based on drawings which al-Haj himself made of his experiences inside Guantánamo. The most recent showed a skeleton strapped to a gurney and indicates al-Haj’s own horrendous experience of the camp hospital.

Dozens of journalists – mostly Iraqis – have been detained by US troops over the last three years, according to the Committee for the Protection of Journalists. While most have been released after short periods, in at least eight cases documented by CPJ Iraqi journalists have been held by US forces for weeks or months without charge. Several of the detainees were photojournalists who initially drew the military’s attention because of what they had filmed or photographed.

Journalists continue to be targeted, by the US and by their puppet regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In February, Afghan journalism student Pervez Kambaksh was arrested for distributing a pamphlet about women’s rights, tried and sentenced to death without a defence lawyer, in a closed court. The Independent’s defence and diplomatic correspondent Kim Sengupta wrote to MWAW this week about his plight:

“Pervez has been transferred from Mazar to a prison in Kabul where, according to the authorities, he is being kept in solitary confinement for his own safety. As far as prison conditions are concerned, he was better off in Mazar where he could mix with other prisoners and had the protection of the fairly enlightened head of prisons for northern Afghanistan, Gen Taj Mohammed. There are still no definite dates for his appeal.”

Add your name to the Independents petition to free Pervez Kambaksh here:
www.independent.co.uk/pervez

Maddy Ryle

Hear Dahr Jamail, Nick Davies, Kim Sengupta and Lindsey German speaking to a packed meeting at Westminster University on April 10:

Click here for high quality recording by Middle East Panorama

Dahr Jamail was an independent journalist in Iraq and is author of “Beyond the Green Zone“

Nick Davies is an award-winning Guardian journalist and author of “Flat Earth News“

Kim Sengupta is defence and diplomatic correspondent, the Independent

Lindsey German is national convenor, Stop the War Coalition

Full details of the event here

Roger Alton’s move from the Observer to edit the Independent is as shocking as Tony Blair’s appointment as Middle East envoy, and marks a set-back for the anti-war movement. To understand why, we must look at the Indie’s stance on Iraq, why Blair hated the paper, Alton’s politics and what he did at the Observer.

Alton was a crusader for the invasion of Iraq. As Johann Hari, who himself backed the invasion at the time, put it on the eve of the war: “There is now a considerable school of British centre-left thinkers and commentators who are lobbying hard for war, so that the Iraqi people can be freed: Christopher Hitchens, Nick Cohen, John Lloyd, Julie Burchill, Roger Alton and David Aaronovitch.”

In other words, Alton was up there with the worst of British journalists in terms of craven support of Bush and Blair and contempt for the anti-war case.

Hari’s observation is backed up by Nick Davies, who discovered that Alton had an intimate lunch with Blair in autumn 2002 “from which, according to colleagues, Alton returned full of determined support for the campaign against Saddam”. With the Observer’s home affairs correspondent David Rose being fed “sheer disinformation” by MI6, and its political editor Kamal Ahmed deep in Alastair Campbell’s pocket, readers of Alton’s newspaper were, as Davies catalogues in some detail, “slowly soaked in disinformation” about Iraq.

Yet Alton carried on with his support for the invasion. When columnist Richard Ingrams quit the paper in 2005, he insisted that the Observer’s stance on Iraq was damaging the paper: “It’s particularly noticeable on the whole Iraq issue. In the Indie, you had a very strong attack on the whole thing from the beginning. But The Observer’s got it wrong about Iraq, which goes on and on, and you’re clobbered by that unless you get up and say: ‘We got it wrong’.”

Ingrams was right that the gap between the Observer and the Independent was huge.

On the day after the Hutton report came out in January 2004, the Independent produced a totally white front page with a one-word headline: “WHITEWASH”. In Blair’s last major public speech as prime minister, he attacked the Independent, after which the paper splashed with: “Would you be saying this, Mr Blair, if we supported your war in Iraq?” Beneath that headline, the paper’s editor Simon Kelner hit back brilliantly at Blair:

“After 10 years of the Blair administration, a decade of spin and counter-spin, of dodgy dossiers, of 45-minute warnings, of burying bad news, of manipulation and misinformation, we feel that the need to interpret and comment upon the official version of events is more important than ever.”

Kelner saw it as a “badge of honour” to be singled out by Blair.

Will Alton take a similarly brave and principled stand against Gordon Brown and George Bush? It is enough just to ask the question to see what an absurd proposition that is. But if you need more proof, here it is from the horse’s mouth.

Alton on Blair: “Blair is fucking good.“

And again: “I think he’s a very good prime minister and an exceptional politician who will be much missed when he’s gone. Some of the hostility to him is quite baffling. I just can’t understand it. It doesn’t logically relate to things.”

Alton on editorial priorities: “Absolutely have your environmental horrors in Sudan, but you might put it on page four. On page three you might well have, as we did, inside Sven’s five-star England football World Cup love nest — just because it’s more visual.”

On the prosecution of BNP leader Nick Griffin: “ludicrous… should never have been brought”.

On Kamal Ahmed: “Kamal is one of the best journalists I have ever worked with and of the highest integrity, so if anybody impinges his integrity I’ll go and punch his fucking face in.”

What Alton’s editorship of the Independent means is this.

Every pro-war editor will feel safer in his or her job, and more confident in their editorial line. Piers Morgan and Greg Dyke, sacked over Iraq, are still in the news media wilderness. But Alton has taken over the Indie. The message couldn’t be clearer.

Every other editor will feel under even more pressure to give in to the dominant pro-war assumptions: our leaders’ intentions in the “war on terror” are noble; Iraq is yesterday’s story and our audience doesn’t want to hear about it; the anti-war movement is beyond the pale, an unrepresentative rump that is stuck in a rut.

Every journalist will feel it that more difficult to stand out against the notion that the Iraq WMD fiasco is behind us, we can carry on as if nothing had happened.

Alton’s appointment at the Indie is a disgrace. The anti-war movement should watch closely what happens to the paper and be ready to mobilise against Alton in support of the Indie journalists who have made their paper the conscience of the British media.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Journalists opposed to the occupation of Iraq today called on the British media to report fairly on demonstrations marking the 5th anniversary of the invasion.

The London demonstration on Saturday March 15 will surround Parliament to remind our political leaders that their continuing collaboration with George W. Bush and his illegal wars has not been forgotten.

There will be more than 300 demonstrations worldwide against the occupation of Iraq. These include a march in Basra. A full list can be found at www.worldagainstwar.org

David Crouch, chair of Media Workers Against the War, said:

“Every survey of public opinion has shown that the Stop the War Coalition has consistently represented majority opinion in this country on the vital issues of war and peace ever since the initial attack on Iraq.

“Despite politicians’ decision to ignore public opinion, including the extraordinary London demonstration of 1.5m people in February 2003, the Stop the War movement has continued to organise protests far bigger, more inclusive and representative than anything this country has ever seen.

“We therefore ask journalists in print, radio and TV that today’s demonstration be fully and fairly reported.

“If public opinion continues to be ignored the result will be measured in yet more death and destruction – and public cynicism about the media and politics.”

Press contact: 07801 789 297

Notes for editors:

Media Workers Against the War is a group of media professionals who campaign for fair reporting of the “war on terror”. More info: www.mwaw.net

For details of today’s (Saturday) London demonstration, go to www.stopwar.org.uk or call 07801 789 297

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.

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