A free press or cover-ups what do you want?
Firstly if the press didnt report this sort of thing you wouldnt ever hear about it. Secondly I take deep umbrage at the suggestion that I as a reporter am driven by ensuring my paper earns more money.
Like most reporters I am driven by the desire to get the story, to tell the readers what is going on out there. In short to do my job properly and to the best of my ability. If you dont like it it's your right but the media is doing its job, doing what it is supposed to do. it is not some personal vendetta against the forces. The attempts to out wrongdoing extend right across public life and rightly so.
Nor does the media only write critically about the forces. I have written yards and yards of stuff about how good our forces are and so have my colleagues, even on the leftist papers. At the time these attacks were going on I was midway through an extended magazine article on how good our troops were at dealing with local people at the Provincial Reconstruction Team at Mazar, an article that took two trips six months apart.
I was also reporting contemporaneously about the tough time the troops were having handling Iraqis who were rioting over something over which our troops have no control. It had to be done from a distance. There was a lot of good stuff going on in southern Iraq at the time but the MoD kept the media away. Still some reporters managed to get out there and report it.
But if someone does this then it has to be reported too. The suggestion that we should take this to the MoD and then wait for them to let us print the story is naive frankly. The MoD would cover it up and deal with it quietly. The UK military courts system is open only in name.
It isnt nice to hear about this stuff but it has to be reported if anyone is going to do anything to change things. To my mind that is what is critical here. The people who want to attack our boys in Iraq don't need an excuse they will do it anyway. As I said before, the idea that this type of behaviour is a one-off is blown away by the evidence. We need to stop saying 'oh its only a few what are you moaning about' and start getting things back to a position where this type of behaviour is not even contemplated yet alone tolerated