From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.

And I'm Brooke Ladstone. This week, the Attorney General scandal competed for airtime with captive sailors,

a British crew that may or may not have trespassed in Iranian waters.

Among them, leading seamen Faye Turney, featured on Iranian TV in a

headscarf praising her captors. Obviously, we trespassed into their waters. They were very friendly,

very hospitable. On Thursday, we spoke to Matt Wells, media critic for the Guardian newspaper.

He says anti-Muslim sentiment has been inflamed since the terrorist attacks in London two years ago.

So the symbolism of a British sailor mum paraded before the world in a hijab sent the tabloid press into an ecstasy of rage, starting with

the Daily Mail.

It's quite clear what they're trying to do.

There's a picture of the female service personnel next to a long banner headline which

says a British mother paraded on state TV, forced to wear the hijab, made to praise her Iranian kidnappers,

and the response from our mighty foreign office, this is unacceptable, they squeaked.

So, I mean, that's quite a clever way of bringing together all sorts of different issues in the one headline.

Today's Daily Express, which is fighting for the same

kind of middle market readership as the Daily Mail, has the same picture, and its headline is

forced to wear a Muslim scarf, how Iran paraded a British hostage. So again, they're highlighting

the Muslim scarf issue. The other papers, the Daily Mirror outrage is its big headline,

again, the same picture. A young mum paraded like a trophy on TV, forced by the cowards of Iran

to lie about how she and 14 British servicemen were taken hostage. So similar imagery there.

Would you say that the tabloids are expressing the kind of collective zeitgeist?

And is the anger being evenly split between Iran and Tony Blair?

...