Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Fighting For Freedom

The Ministry of Defence has banned ITV News from its official facilities and refused to allow them to embed journalists with British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, I'm no fan of ITV News but that's not really the point. The point is what this says about the way the government "supports our troops".

First, they send them to extremely dangerous places without supplying them with the proper equipment. Then they fail to provide adequate medical facilities for those who are physically or mentally injured in the course of their duties. And finally, if a news organisation has the temerity to report on these failures, that news organisation is summarily punished.

These are the very same people who last night argued that a demand for independent scrutiny of their own performance somehow equated to a lack of support for our troops. They really are beneath contempt.

Oh, and welcome to the land of censorship of uncomfortable truths. When Blair first started his campaign to export freedom to the rest of the world, I didn't quite grasp the full implications of the "export" part of the process.

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2 comments:

Bill said...

For your information this was reported in The Times about a week ago:
http://billcameron.blogspot.com/2006/10/sounds-like-cover-up-to-me.html

Garry said...

Thanks Bill. I did know that this had been running for a while.

If I'm honest, my delayed response was due to my attitude to ITV News. Like you, I'm no fan. Unlike you, my negative opinion meant that it took a good while before the significance of what the government had done fully registered in my mind. I did get there in the end.