It does illustrate something which goes rather wider than this particular story. The media (particularly newspapers) have long-since reached a stage where simple reporting of facts is no longer their primarly interest. Newspapers are now more concerned with setting their own agendas, and "interpreting" news for their readers, which effectively means they tell the reader what they ought to think. Television news isn't quite so bad, but even they have drifted into this kind of position, so that (for example) they can't refer to the now-infamous footage of the solders beating the Iraqi brats without calling it "shocking footage", as if we'd be incapable of deciding whether it was in fact shocking or merely understandable, without their advice.
However, it's encouraging to see that the Great British Public isn't quite so stupid as the media often imagines. For example, the long and tedious Michael Barrymore saga began with the Sun trying to pin a murder charge on the entertainer, essentially because he had "come out" as being gay, and the Sun evidently thought this was a sufficiently serious crime to have him expelled from television. Through a process of ferocious mud-slinging and colourful language, they managed to reach a position where people were actually starting to believe a completely different set of facts to those which were the truth.
But fascinatingly, when Barrymore appeared on the recent Celebrity Big Brother show, he received a hugely warm response when he went in, won the runner-up position in the show, and received a standing ovation on the first TV show he did the following week. And what did The Sun do about it? They evidently decided that despite their poison, their best bet was to drop the "shamed entertainer Barrymore" line of two week's previously, and pay him for his "story" and arrange a meeting with the father of the guy who was found dead in Barrymore's pool!
Interesting isn't it, how a newspaper can suddenly shift through 180 degrees, when they finally realise that even with all the vitriol at their disposal, the public managed to see right through it.
The same situation may well apply with the "shocking footage" of the Iraqi thugs being beaten. Despite the newspapers and other media whipping themselves into a frenzy of supposed outrage, one suspects that the vast majority of right-thinking people in this country are quietly thinking to themselves that this sort of reaction has been going on all along, and that it's entirely understandable and justified.