That's your disreputable British media, then: an offensive act to suit every taste. One minute, typically, they are tools of the establishment, willing to suppress news and connive in a shameless publicity stunt to justify a lousy war. Nothing much has changed, some will conclude, since the days when the escapades of Edward and Mrs Simpson were being kept from public view.

Come the next minute, however, and the same feral media are happy, even eager, to put the lives of a brave young man and his comrades at risk for the sake of a few headlines. The hacks have to be restrained, through long negotiation and the promise of a quid pro quo, from handing a coup to the Taliban.

Wait a minute more. Had Prince Harry not been sent to Afghanistan or some other locale where real soldiering takes place, some of us would have been asking questions. I think I asked a few when the decision was first made to spare the prince Iraq. All that time and public money spent just to turn out a toy trooper? All those ordinary soldiers dead in the name of Her Majesty's Government while one grandson is wrapped in protocol, privilege and cotton wool?

Given all that, journalists might be entitled to think they can't win. His cover blown after 10 weeks by America's egregious online Drudge Report, young Harry probably feels the same. No doubt the Ministry of Defence also believes that this one is impossible to win. Funnily enough, that's just what I think about Afghanistan.

As one who knew nothing about it, the deal between editors and the MoD does not strike me as morally complicated. The freedom to report ceases to be paramount if reporting is liable to put lives at risk. The editors could have been obdurate. They could have refused to compromise normal standards and told the generals to solve the problem by keeping Harry out of harm's way. But could all those editors then have prevented someone, somewhere, from questioning the prince's usefulness in print or on air? That would have been a black-out of a different, worse, sort.

It's simple, in one sense. Had Harry been blown to bits thanks to a snatched picture or a stray headline, journalists would have caught hell. Instead, we (extend the courtesy to Matt Drudge, if you must) take flak either for suppressing news, or for ruining the prince's cherished deployment by seizing on a leaked story. According to taste, the internet is the hero of the hour, or the villain of the piece.

As I understand it, the editors debated long and bargained hard before reaching an understanding with the MoD. Those who regard the media as lower than a latrine will not be impressed by that. Nevertheless, and as a matter of fact, it requires a great deal of self-persuasion to inhibit British journalism when there is a prime royal story at stake. At my most cynical I grant this much: even the redtops must have calculated that the consequences of publishing might be worse than the consequences of failing to publish.

Harry got his taste of normal army life, in any case. Ten weeks rather than 14: better, I suspect, than he could have hoped. And better than the 7800 British personnel in Afghanistan could ever hope for. Channel 4's Jon Snow, grumbling retrospectively about the blackout, was right about that. All this fuss over one soldier? How many journalistic resources have been devoted lately to the rest, to the near-weekly fatalities, the equipment shortages, the absence of any strategic plan? The Taliban is promising a spring offensive. How many front pages will that fill?

Harry's story makes me uneasy, in any case. There would have been no problem, after all, if Britain had once come to terms with some of the absurd consequences of monarchy and its superfluous personnel. There would have been no problem had Britain avoided a stupid war, a war that has now been given its own royal warrant. "One of Our Boys", trumpeted a tabloid yesterday. That's untrue.

It is untrue in the same way that Harry's desire for a normal career is a nonsense. He can never have such a thing. He should never, least of all in the present geo-political mess, have joined the army. Unfair, no doubt. Given his statements, the youth would no doubt have regarded such an outcome as a kind of personal tragedy. But this boy will never, short of a republic, be one of the boys. There is little point in indulging the pretence.

The MoD is reported to be "disappointed" at the way things have turned out. Somehow I doubt it. The publicity has been plentiful and, for the royals and the generals, favourable. The media have taken the hit. The Afghanistan conflict has, meanwhile, acquired its poster boy, praised for his courage by the Prime Minister, and the bleaker realities of a multibillion-pound catastrophe have been overlooked. A royal has served his historic function: he has distracted us and endorsed a war.

The point isn't trivial. Will Harry turn out to have been good for recruitment? He got to call down his own air-strike for Christmas. He got a cool nickname: Bullet Magnet. Or, if you truly prefer: a serious young man has carried out the difficult job for which he has trained and been lauded as a result. Those in his age group - I hesitate to say peers - might be impressed.

If the embargo had been refused, Harry would not have been sent to Afghanistan. That much is obvious. Instead, the MoD can now say that if a prince of the blood can fight the Taliban, anyone can fight the Taliban. But if the embargo had been refused the media would have been accused, as ever, of demanding the right to report intrusively, or, worse, of putting lives at risk. We would have "ruined it for Harry" - or got him killed. It would have amounted to another of those very British zero-sum games.

Unmediated media do not exist, of course. I recall the retired admiral who first introduced me to the mysteries of the D notice system. The truth was, though I didn't let on at the time, that we didn't actually have any sort of story involving a Scottish military installation, but since the admiral had chosen to telephone, I concluded that there must be a story in there somewhere. Then he reminded me that my then editor was serving on the D notice committee itself. End, as it were, of story.

Journalists, readers, listeners and viewers aghast by the Harry episode and its implications for the media, if any, have a response available: pay attention to Afghanistan. The plight of the prince is of interest if the monarchy's position in British life is of interest. The relationship between the state and the fourth estate is of continuing interest. But a sideshow is a sideshow. The second front in the perpetual war on terror has been allowed to become peripheral, and that counts as a disgrace.

Dozens of British dead; one prince discomfited: do the sums. Or just remind yourself that if the Christmas air-strike Harry called down upon Taliban fighters had the usual consequences, civilians are also dead. That's another story.