How to lose the war

Imagine the effect on morale if, instead of the headline (shown left) proclaiming the invasion of France on 6 June 1944 – and many more like it – the newspapers had run with: "Thousands dead in Northern France – troops slaughtered on the beaches".

Then imagine the newspapers running pictures of the dead, like the one below, zealously totting up the count for every following day – with absolutely no news on how the campaign was going. And how long do you think support for the war would have lasted?

Yet, is not that exactly what our media are doing, with a particularly egregious example in The Daily Telegraph today – straight out of The Independent school of journalism? The paper prints a picture of every single one of the 50 soldiers killed as a result of service in Afghanistan (including those killed in accidents) and then, on the front page, gives a graphic account of how one soldier met his untimely death.

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