Mick,
Thank you for your post - I don't subscribe to the idea that all hacks are soulless monsters out to tear the Armed Forces apart. However, some papers could certainly do a lot better than spouting bile one day and pouring roses on us the next.
I forget who mentioned the BBC as an example of a horribly biased organisation that wants nothing more than to hurt the military. Having watched the Ten O'Clock News this evening, I was more than impressed with the BBC. They aired the scenes on the video up to the moment when the News of the World's footage starts. It shows a crowd of Iraqi youths attacking a British military compound after it has been mortared. Troops rush forwards to disperse the crowd, and a few of them capture some youths. Now faced with the people who have just tried to kill them, the troops are rough but efficient.
It is after this that a small group of soldiers take some of the youths into a separate area - away from the rest of the platoon and therefore out of sight and control - and assault some of the youths. The commentary on the video is, frankly, sickening.
The point to the BBC's airing of the main part of the video was to put the attack into context. They spent 10 minutes interviewing people to find out - surprise, surprise - that being mortared and stoned is to say the least a tad annoying, and likely to bring out the worse in us all. This does not excuse the atrocious behaviour of the soldiers shown in the NotW's footage, but the BBC went to great lengths to contrast that behaviour with the behaviour of the majority of British troops.
The sad fact is, no amount of mitigation is going to prevent a backlash. After Piers "Morgan" Moron published hoaxed photos of British "abuse" a few years back, the backlash was severe. Despite the fact that the story was a pack of lies.
I fear the NotW - perhaps acting altrusitically - has lit a tinderbox now. They did not show the video in its full context, choosing to concentrate on the harsher side instead of pointing out that not a single shot was fired in what must have been a terrifying and stressful situation. THAT is what should p!$$ every decent journalist off.
t_e
Mr McLelland - I don't know if you're serving at the moment, but you sure as hell don't speak for me.