Media Guardian

By Leigh Holmwood

26 October 2006

ITV is to raise the stakes in its row with the Ministry of Defence over its coverage of how injured British troops are treated by screening a special edition of Tonight with Trevor McDonald on the subject on Monday.

The ITV1 current affairs programme, which is made by ITV Productions, is editorially independent of the ITN-produced ITV News, which first stoked the controversy with a series of reports last week on the treatment of injured British troops returning to the UK from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Tonight is expected to broadcast some of ITV News' footage and use the current row to look again at the issue of the treatment of troops, which it first reported on earlier in the year.

Earlier this week, the MoD criticised what it saw as inaccuracies in one of ITV News's reports and said the privacy of one soldier had been invaded.

In response, the MoD banned ITN reporters from being embedded with British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and threatened legal action.

A spokesman for Tonight with Trevor McDonald said: "At the heart of the current dispute between ITV News and the Ministry of Defence ... is the medical treatment of British forces engaged in combat, which is clearly an important matter of public interest.

"Tonight with Trevor McDonald led the way in reporting on this issue earlier this year, and in light of this week's developments, we are revisiting it in an effort to clarify the situation for the viewing public."

Meanwhile, the dispute between ITN and the MoD rumbles on, with the news broadcaster waiting for clarification on the ban on its reporters being embedded with British troops.

A senior ITN source said the broadcaster was hopeful the situation would be resolved by the end of the week and that its correspondent Bill Neely would still be able to report on Remembrance Day services with British troops in Afghanistan early next month.