Monday 8 March 2010

No reporting from Afghanistan during the election.


Expect to see less of this during the election.
Even though reporting during the 1945 election
was never suspended.

Reporters are facing a 'gag' on reporting from Afghanistan in the run up to the election. Is anyone surprised? I guess not but at least Gordy managed to get his own piece of electioneering from Afghanistan done last week. That is of course before the ban will come into effect. A further example of powerful, corrupt government suiting it's own ends. Never mind the troops, I wonder if the next of kin of any casualties that occur during the period of this gag will have to wait for news. I mean will the MOD wait until after the election and then tell the families their loved ones have died, days or weeks later. It would certainly be expedient for this government to do so and in keeping with the spirit of this unnecessary restriction on press freedom.

In the words of Colonel Douglas Young Chairman of the British Armed Forces Federation:



“It didn’t happen in 1945 - there was no question of limiting reporting at that time simply because an election was happening and I don’t see why there should be any questions of that now. Are we to stop operations during this period? Obviously not, and if operations are in process they should be reported upon in the normal way.

“It is ridiculous to expect the forces to be hiding away just because there’s a general election.”

3 comments:

Organized Rage. said...

Paul

That is a hell of an important blog, I missed that, I was going to write unbelievable, but these days nothing this bunch do would surprise me.

Cheers

Paul said...

What makes it particularly galling is that reporting was never suspended during the 1945 election. During which hundreds of thousands of British and Commonwealth (particularly Indian) were in action in Burma.

Organized Rage. said...

Exactly

I doubt these people ever read a history book, if they had they would not have made such a mess of the occupation of Iraq. Within living memory they had the example of the military occupations of Germany and Japan, which in the scheme of such things went comparatively well.