(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-03-02 21:00

But dissenting voices are beginning to be heard, not least about the British media's rare, but not unprecedented, agreement with the defence ministry to a news blackout until Harry's return.

The presenter of Britain's Channel 4 News, Jon Snow, in an e-mail previewing Thursday's show, said: "One wonders whether viewers, readers and listeners will ever want to trust media bosses again.

"Or perhaps this was a courageous editorial decision to protect this fine young man?" he asked.

The British publicist Max Clifford told The Guardian Saturday the deployment was a "total, superficial, PR exercise" aimed at casting Harry -- who has a reputation as a wayward party animal -- in a more positive light.

One columnist at the right-of-centre Mail on Sunday said the focus on Harry and criticism of foreign media for breaking a gentleman's agreement was "sheer propaganda" that "may make us feel 'our boys are winning' in Afghanistan.

"But this is not the truth at all," wrote Suzanne Moore.

"Instead of secret meetings between the MoD and TV and newspaper editors and the Palace, wouldn't this time have been better spent in working out what we are trying to do in this brutalised country, as no-one is quite sure any more?"

In the Independent on Sunday, a British soldier who served in Iraq and Afghanistan criticised Britain's campaign in Helmand, arguing air strikes of the kind Harry called in as a battlefield air controller were not working.

"Rather than highlighting the appalling truths about the war in Helmand, the media, dazzled by the heroic ideal that Prince Harry so perfectly embodies, perpetuate the myth that this is a just war fit for heroes," said Leo Docherty.

"This is war reduced to entertainment, willingly ignorant of the truth that young men like Harry, both British and Afghan, are dying violent pointless deaths in Helmand province.

"Outrage is the only response to this, not entertainment."

The Observer, another centre-left weekly, said the complexities of the NATO-led mission and tensions between allies, particularly over troop numbers and rules of engagement, had been overlooked.

Scant attention was paid to recent claims about the Afghan government's fragile grip on power in the face of the Taliban's "kamikaze fanaticism," the difficulties of reconstruction or the coalition's counter-narcotics strategy, it wrote.

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