Indeed. I once made the same point myself.

I’ll reply on mmy blog later. Currently I cannot get in (isp tech trouble) and I am under siege from Harry Potter enthusiasts wanting to hear him talk about cricket.

The fact that there had been no agreement between the two parties since the 1970s should have been flagged up more than it was - and that we were looking at an old map. This was rarely mentioned when the map was used. I pose that it was sense of banal patriotism which may have lead to these facts being overlooked because there doesn’t seem to be any other explanation. There was a sense in the coverage that the media had gotten behind the navy and was ‘backing our boys’ - which was fine, except that in return we had little critical coverage until after the event took place.

It’s credibility was reified by the fact that Iran and Iraq had not renegotiated the border and therefore the British had no option or right other than to use that line.

You say that:
>”I can’t think of any other time where a hack has sat down and thought ‘I won’t run this story, it might upset the course of government business’.”

That’s quite an accusation, and it looks to me like an assumption. You then state “it was patriotism at work”, even though you present no evidence that “it” actually occurred.

Have you got any evidence that they did that? If not, then I’d suggest you rephrase the paragraph.

As far as I know, the only place anywhere that ran the story was Al-Jazeera, and they got it from a US Navy briefing. Hardly “The West” suppressing unhelpful information there. I blogged it on March 26th (link on my name).