imroy's Journal: The first casualty...

The first casualty in war is always the truth, or something like that. There was some interesting points raised by MediaWatch on Monday (last) nights show. For non-Aussies, MediaWatch is a short 10 minute weekly program on ABC TV that critiques news content on TV, radio, and print media. It may be short, but it packs a real punch. It not only covers trivial issues of factual errors and the like, but also more important ones like plaguerism, conflicts of interest, and flat-out biased reporting.

Covered in this weeks show, was the reporting of Australias' contribution to the possible war in Iraq. Once again for non-Aussies, our Prime Minister seems to be quite willing to go all the way along with the US. Our PM has always held that our troop deployment was to put pressure on Sadam, and that we're waiting for the UN and/or the US before we join the war. But it seems that journalists are finding it hard to get approval to go to the gulf and report on our troops. The fear, as pointed out, is that our PM (and thus US president Bush) is really preparing for war while pretending that he's not. Especially curious is that he brushes off the question of whether we'll still go to war without UN backing as being hypothetical when asked in interviews. Aren't these people supposed to be accountable?