MEDIA STUDIES
Lord Rothermere bans the paparazzi it costs him commercially unless
STEPHEN GLOVER
Have the tabloids changed? Have they been shamed by Lord Spencer and public opinion? It certainly seems so. The Daily Star, the Daily Mirror, the Sun and the Daily Mail have all said they will not buy or use paparazzi pictures of Prince William and Prince Harry in the future. The Daily Express has gone even further in promising not to publish any pictures of the two young Princes without the approval of their guardians.
It would appear, if these pledges are to be believed, that we stand at the dawn of a new era. I personally think the tabloids mean what they say. Even while they were hounding Diana, Princess of Wales, they undertook to give Princes William and Harty a pretty wide berth, and by and large they did so. Given what has happened, and the criticism they have received from Lord Spencer and others, I do not think it credu- lous to suppose they will try even harder.
Consider too that the Princess of Wales was sui generic. No one in the royal family has the kind of relationship she enjoyed with the tabloids. Lord Spencer's character- isation of her as a woman hunted by rapa- cious tabloids will not quite do. She was a very glamorous woman whom it sometimes suited to be photographed and written about. Doubtless she was often unforgiv- ably harried by the tabloids but at times she found them useful. Only six hours before her death she rang her friend Richard Kay of the Daily Mail who had often written about her. She was involved with the tabloid press to an extent unimaginable in any other member of the royal family.
For all these reasons it is tempting to believe that the death of the Princess of Wales marks a turning-point in coverage of royal affairs. In some respects I'm sure it does. But it is wrong to suppose that intru- sive pictures, whether taken by paparazzi or staff photographers, represent the only problem. The real issue is the press's right to publish private and intimate details about members of the royal family. One can imagine a hypothetical article about Prince William in a few months' time which offered a detailed account of his feelings. Even if this were not accompanied by a pry- ing photograph, it might justifiably be con- sidered as intrusive.
Last week the tabloids railed against the royal family and the Queen for their allegedly unfeeling reaction to the death of the Princess. The Daily Mirror caught the hysterical tone: 'The people of Britain are suffering grievously.' (You can count me out for one. I was sad, but not in a state of extreme pain.) The paper desperately appealed to the Queen. 'Speak to us, Ma'am, please speak.' Assailed from every quarter, the Queen did react, and the next day the Mirror got what it and the other tabloids had been gunning for: a picture of Prince Harry on the front page holding his father's hand and looking at a mountain of bouquets.
Was it fair to the young Prince to parade him in such a way? Pah! Fairness doesn't come into it. What the tabloids wanted perhaps what many people wanted — was a show of human emotion that makes the heart miss a beat. It was deeply affecting, but the price of our being affected was pos- sibly to cause unnecessary further anguish to the young Prince. The press justified itself by invoking 'people power'. The peo- ple demanded a show of grief, a public dis- play of private emotions. It is my belief that a great many people did not in fact want this, but there was a voluble minority which did, and it suited the tabloids to represent this minority as speaking for Britain.
The point is that it is the business of tabloids to uncover as much as possible about the private feelings of public figures. Last week, with ample assistance from tele- vision, they allied themselves with people power. I wrote in another place that there was a disjunction between their former gut- ter hounding of Diana and their new-found moral fervour which enabled them to lec- ture the royal family from the pulpit about its lack of feeling. But the more I think about it, the more I am sure that the tab- loids were being consistent. They had want- ed to pry into Diana's private emotions, and now they wanted to pry into the emo- tions of other members of the royal family.
That is what tabloid newspapers are about, and sometimes the broadsheets too, if we are honest. Many of us have an insa- tiable desire to know as many personal details as possible about the private lives of members of the royal family. It is fanciful to suppose that the tabloids' desire to meet this need, which is fundamental to their very sense of being, is going to dissipate because of the events of the past few days, and frankly barmy to think that banning paparazzi photographs marks a change of heart. Only if we collectively agree that we don't want to know any personal details about members of the royal family will the tabloids really change. Do we honestly believe that is likely to happen?
In fact, the provisional nature of the new rules was evident in a remark by Lord Rothermere, proprietor of the Daily Mail, in an interview on Monday on Radio Four's The World at One. Speaking of his new ban against the paparazzi, his lordship said, 'If my fellow proprietors don't agree with me, I don't know how long I can keep up that instruction.' In other words, Lord Rother- mere has no insurmountable principled objection to prying into the lives of the royal family. He doesn't like to do it but he will do so if commercial pressures dictate. Whether they use paparazzi photographs or not, the tabloids will go on being them- selves.
Ihave always admired Tony Blair for his religious beliefs. On the whole he wears them lightly, although those who have read him on religious matters know the depth of his feelings. Some authorities assert that it was unprecedented for a prime minister to read a lesson at a royal funeral. Perhaps his unusually strong faith justifies his appear- ance at the lectern in Westminster Abbey during the funeral of the Princess of Wales.
However, in reading from 1 Corinthians xiii Mr Blair managed to destroy the text, and betray aspects of himself I had not pre- viously seen. How William Rees-Mogg could have brought himself to praise his rendition for its sincerity in the Times pass- es all understanding. The Prime Minister declaimed these verses as though he were delivering a speech to the Labour party conference, furrowing his brow, fluttering his eyelashes and placing absurd stresses on certain words in an attempt to play on our heart-strings. It was a ham performance, and the effect was to place Mr Blair between the text and ourselves. Was this violation an innocent misjudgment or a rev- elation of exceptional vanity?
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