LETTERS News bias
Sir: Your leading article (14 May) on the television coverage of the Gibraltar shooting and the Prime Minister's reaction was entitled 'Beyond anger'. People who are 'beyond anger' are often angry. It is interesting to speculate why Mrs Thatcher and many others have reacted in this way — quite apart from the question of whether it is legal or not to wait for the coroner's inquest.
It is, I think, because of a sense that some of the motives behind the media approach are a desire to do down govern- ment and country. It is hard to imagine television and some newspapers producing a parade of witnesses to demonstrate the guilt of the IRA.
No doubt too, we shall see a television or 'real' play in due course on the theme of the Gibraltar martyrs: with no dramatic response — just as we have seen a block on a play which was sympathetic to resist- ance to a Falklands occupation led by a notorious torturer.
So both sides talk about the legality of it all. What Mrs Thatcher's side should be discussing is the sheer and sickening b,ias of much of the opposition that is presented as 'news'.
Michael Ivens
40 Doughty Street, London WC1
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