The coverage of the Iraq hostage crisis has been no victory for terrorism

The Bigley affair has not brought out the best in anyone. Naturally I exclude Kenneth Bigley himself, who can hardly be blamed for being kidnapped and should be freely forgiven for his desperate Internet appeal to the Prime Minister. But I am not sure that I approve of Mr Bigley’s brother addressing Tony Blair as though he were a halfwit, and saying that he has ‘passed his sell-by date’, much as I disapprove of Our Great Leader. Even Mr Blair deserves a little respect. But then he himself and the unbelievable Jack Straw, who has barely been off the telephone to the Bigleys, have not behaved with very much dignity either.

This is a difficult thing to say — as I write, the fate of Mr Bigley is still unknown — but something seems to have gone wrong when a once great country of 60 million people is obsessed with the life of one man who, after all, freely went to Iraq and chose to live there. Of course, as human beings we are bound to sympathise with Mr Bigley’s awful predicament, but this does not mean that it should be permitted to take over our national life. The media, of course, are largely to blame. Last week, as the deadline for Mr Bigley’s execution approached and passed, the front page of every newspaper, even the Financial Times, was taken up with his likely fate. His Internet appeal — which was presumably bludgeoned out of him, as it would be out of any of us — was covered in melodramatic terms. It may be that down at the Dog and Duck people have an interest in Mr Bigley that is measured and proportionate, but our political and media classes plainly do not.