It's often said that, at their best, newspapers provide the first rough draft of history. What is too often overlooked is that, at their second-best, which is more normally the case anyway, papers deny the existence of history. It is, supposedly, new and different and it would be inappropriate to set every event in its historical context.
News is also the main part of a commodity.
It must help to sell the paper and would lose its commercial impact if its freshness was undermined by referring to the fact that it has happened before, is not really unique at all and, seen in that light, quite inconsequential. It is therefore costly and, given the cult of youth that pervades so many papers nowadays, there are often too few people around editorial floors with a working knowledge of post-war modern history. Perhaps the most pernicious reason for our ahistorical press is its political agenda. A combination of these factors, with the last undoubtedly the most prevalent, occurred in the coverage of loyalist gang warfare in Northern Ireland last week. Rightwing papers suddenly found themselves in a tricky situation because the story did not fit neatly into the previous 30-year pattern of events.