Watching brief - Amanda Platell asks if Piers Morgan will survive
Published 10 May 2004
I have no experience of being weed on, but the stream of urine in the Mirror pictures of alleged torture in Iraq did not look very convincing to me
Piers Morgan is like one of those magnificent, strutting turkeys that miraculously escape slaughter every Christmas despite the knives being out for them. Admirers of the Daily Mirror editor - and there are many, this writer included - are hoping that he will continue to display these survival skills in the row over the Iraqi torture pictures, in spite of what looks increasingly like a hoax.
Morgan was not alone in falling for the pictures. On Saturday the Mirror splashed its "world exclusive": "Vile. But this time, it's British soldiers" ran the headline over the picture of a soldier purportedly peeing on an Iraqi prisoner. The Sun ran the same picture inside on pages 8 and 9 under the headline: "Shame on OUR boys". But it was more circumspect.
By the following Tuesday, the Sun - in typical style - was showing readers how to mock up and make their own peeing pictures at home. The Mirror, however, ploughed on, claiming that unnamed defence sources had said "there was no evidence to doubt our photos". It was rather disingenuous to use the claim from the Ministry of Defence that it was "taking the photos at face value . . . it is very serious". The MoD had absolutely no other option.
The editor of a national newspaper does, however, have an option: whether to run such pictures in the first place and then whether to keep running with them, when so much doubt is being cast over their authenticity.
Morgan must be very sure of his sources to have stuck his neck out this far. And the latest defence - that even if the pictures were not real they were illustrative of beatings being carried out by our troops in Iraq - will not save him if they prove to be fake. If they had been presented as such, that would be a different matter, but they were not.
The Guardian was offering the Mirror no crumb of comfort as the story turned sour. Its front-page treatment was balanced: "Army claims there is more evidence photos were fake", which was an accurate summary of the story so far.
Morgan's claim that he would never do anything to endanger troops as his brother is a serving officer in Basra adds pathos but no mitigation to his case.
And as far as those pictures are concerned, I've always thought they looked a bit dodgy, especially the urinating one. I hasten to add that I have no experience in being weed on, but that stream of urine was not convincing, even to an ingenue like me.
For now, let's forget about the effect the story has on our boys at the front: what about our boy at the Mirror? How much will it hurt a newspaper with a high squaddie readership if our troops are specifically targeted as a result of the story, as defence experts claim, and the pictures are proven to be fakes?
It is one thing attacking an increasingly unpopular war. It's quite another unwittingly to use fake torture photos to discredit some of our troops and further endanger others.
On BBC1's Question Time recently, I was vilified by Estelle Morris for suggesting the government used decoys to divert attention from its problems. It was the week of Tony Blair's U-turn on the EU referendum and, coincidentally, on that day ten people were arrested in
Manchester on suspicion of a terrorist plot
to blow up Manchester United football ground. Hold the front page, kick off Blair's EU U-turn, and there you have it.
I noted it was a coincidence that whenever Blair got into deep trouble, we had a terrorist alert - tanks at Heathrow three days before the Iraq anti-war march, the fertiliser-bomb raid in Middlesex the day Beverley Hughes was forced to resign, and the Manchester arrests on EU U-turn day.
So it was with some feeling of vindication that I read the Observer on 2 May: "Man U bomb plot probe ends in farce". All ten suspects were released without charge and it turned out that the Manchester United tickets - the ones the "terrorists" were going to use to get into the grounds and blow everybody up - were old, used souvenirs. Ms Morris, you owe the public an apology.
And for those of you who didn't get the News of the World last weekend, EastEnders star turn Dirty Den has been caught cyber-masturbating in his dressing room on the set of the soap. (Note to readers: this is a form of mutual pleasuring performed via the two-way screen of one's personal computer.)
The man who brought 17 million viewers to the soap on the day he reappeared in Albert Square had not one but two moments of madness. He is also alleged to have called Kat a "vile dog" and our Pauline "a wanker", which is pretty rich, under the circumstances. And she's only just buried Mark. EastEnders actors are now threatening to strike unless Leslie Grantham is sacked. Not for lewdness, mind you, but for criticising their acting abilities.
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