Should Piers resign?
11/05/04 11:43 Media
issues
I've resisted shoving my oar in about the Iraqi
pictures, purely because I could think of nothing to
say that would advance the issue in any way. But it's
starting to get interesting, not because of whether
or not the pics in the Mirror were faked (it looks
increasingly as though they were), but because their
authenticity is increasingly a side issue.
The headline stuff is of course 'fake picture! fake picture!' But there is an increasingly loud undercurrent of 'and this was happening, and something else was happening too.' The Guardian today has a piece on the 'hooding' of prisoners when this shouldn't have taken place, for example.
So, should Piers Morgan resign for printing inflammatory pictures which appear faked? Or should we be grateful that someone set these pictures up and sparked a debate that left us wiser about what was actually being done in our name all along? I'm inclining towards the latter - which, given my usual opinion of Morgan, is as much of a surprise to me as it is to anyone else.
The headline stuff is of course 'fake picture! fake picture!' But there is an increasingly loud undercurrent of 'and this was happening, and something else was happening too.' The Guardian today has a piece on the 'hooding' of prisoners when this shouldn't have taken place, for example.
So, should Piers Morgan resign for printing inflammatory pictures which appear faked? Or should we be grateful that someone set these pictures up and sparked a debate that left us wiser about what was actually being done in our name all along? I'm inclining towards the latter - which, given my usual opinion of Morgan, is as much of a surprise to me as it is to anyone else.
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