Anti-war journalists hope for the worst – because the worst will prove them right

We journalists think pretty highly of ourselves. I don’t mean the chap who touches up photographs of Page Three girls; he may have a proper sense of his place in the universe. I mean columnists, leader writers and foreign correspondents. I mean the undoubtedly brave men and women who stand in the desert in Iraq (a country most of them have not visited before) and pronounce on the progress of the war (a subject about which many of them know rather little). I mean the editors who tell us what to think. Most of us draw comfort from the thought that the job we do is a vital one. We know that a free press is the mark of a free society, and we see ourselves as the guardians of that society. And because our work is precious we are apt to think we are a special race of men and women who are not touched in equal measure by the weaknesses and shortcomings of those in public life whose performance we examine and criticise.