Never mind that reporting troop movements in wartime stands alongside shouting “fire!” in a crowded theatre as a restriction on freedom of speech that all but the most anarchistic journalists accept, and consider the double standard.

If the Sun were to reveal the secret location of Maxine Carr, the former girlfriend of the murderer Ian Huntley, Snow would have kittens and say that a populist tabloid was endangering her life. Yet when editors decide not to endanger British soldiers in battle, they are guilty of a breach of trust.

While I was writing this article, the Ministry of Defence announced the death of the 100th British soldier in Afghanistan. Channel 4 News said that it was “duty-bound” to examine Gordon Brown’s claim that our soldiers had died in a noble cause. “Reliable measures” were hard to find, it concluded with a shake of the head. The conservative Spectator went wild and pointed out that the army had pushed the Taliban back to the Pakistani border, allowed the preparations for the upcoming elections and prevented al-Qaeda from re-establishing an Afghan base.

The failure of Channel 4 to grasp that the struggle against a movement that executes teachers for the crime of teaching girls to read and write was a liberal struggle struck me more forcibly. Its report could not allow the notion that radical Islam was against every good liberal principle in the minds of its liberal audience. Doubts and awkward moral questions might follow, and that wouldn’t do.

The bias feels all the more insidious because of the huge advantage politically committed broadcasters enjoy. Politicians realised long ago that taking them on is like swearing at the ref or throwing your racket at the umpire — a mug’s game they can never win. As soon as they are challenged, broadcasters retreat behind the mask of impartiality and present themselves as mere adjudicators. It is no good using the normal tactics of argument against them by pointing out the previous failures of their ideology or their hypocrisies and blind spots. Talking back makes you seem a spoilsport who won’t play by the rules.