ANOTHER VOICE
The gallant Knight riding to Princess Diana's aid
CHARLES MOORE
Anyone reading The Spectator of 4 July should have seen what was coming. In his article in that issue (`The restraint of royal- ist Rupert'), Andrew Knight, the chairman of Rupert Murdoch's News International, sought to justify the Sunday Times' seriali- sation of Andrew Morton's book about the Princess of Wales. The whole enterprise, according to Mr Knight, was driven by the stout monarchism of Mr Murdoch, Andrew Neil, the Editor of the Sunday Times, and himself. They were helping an important British institution and family 'adapt' and 'grow in standing'. In the course of this argument, Mr Knight revealed that `. . .we hold, deliberately unused, in our safes' what he described as 'documented stories of regal infidelities'. He added that 'in some cases [we] have actually paid for [them] so that our tabloid competitors may not use them either'.
Reading this at the time, it was hard to be sure whether this was a boast or a threat. Was it saying, in the sort of lan- guage which never passes Mr Knight's lips, `Watch it, you royal gits, or we'll really dish the dirt' or 'We are so devoted to the British monarchy that its dark secrets are safe with us'? My own conclusion was that it was saying both, but of this more later. What it was also doing was giving notice of publication. Anyone who says, 'I've got a Juicy secret', is preparing the ground for revealing it.
One cannot tell whether Mr Knight was doing this intentionally. Possibly he could not tell either: the evidence provided by the rest of the article suggests that Mr Knight is extremely confused about the morality of royal disclosures and his own motives in supporting them. But whatever the inten- tion, the effect is clear. It was only a matter of time before one of the Murdoch papers opened the safe and published the tape of what is claimed to be a telephone conversa- tion in 1989 between the Princess of Wales and a second-hand-car dealing, 33-year-old, Libran man. (Unless, of course, Mr Knight was speaking of something completely dif- ferent. The Princess of Wales is not, strictly speaking, 'regal', and there has been, according to the Sun, no infidelity — 'She is NOT an adulteress'.)
The precise timing depended on an
► mpetus and an excuse. The impetus came from the pictures of the Duchess of York and John Bryan in the Daily Mirror last week. The Sun valiantly pirated what it could, but the Mirror still won. In July, before the pictures, the Mirror had a daily sale of 3,556,626 compared with the Sun's 3,503,569. The 'Fergie' pictures pulled the Mirror much further ahead. The situation was desperate.
The excuse came from the fact that the transcript of the telephone conversation was published somewhere else first. The National Enquirer in the United States, that well known journal of record, printed extracts from the tape last week. The Sun- day Express followed with large chunks. A book containing the tape is promised. This sequence of events allowed the Sun to run the whole thing, and to explain why, it was doing so in best Andrew Knight-in-shining- armour monarchist vein. It had not pub- lished the tape at the time that it received it because 'We did not want to add to her [the Princess's] problems', but now that it was 'in the public domain', the Sun pub- lished, 'because we wanted to spike damag- ing rumours about Diana which were circu- lating in Fleet Street, Westminster and the Court of St James'. Publication of the tape was, apparently, the Sun's idea of a gallant defence of the Princess. It is an odd one, rather as if Sir Walter Raleigh had dropped his cloak in the puddle, wiped the filthy thing all over Queen Elizabeth I and then claimed credit for an act of chivalry.
It would be monstrous to suggest that the Sun arranged for the tape to appear in America first, and I would be quite happy to suggest it, but it is not necessary to do so. For the point is that, in the current climate of tabloid newspaper competition, abso- lutely anything which puts up sales will The official festival? I think you'll find it on the edge of the fringe . . somehow or other find its way into one or other of the titles, and nothing adds to sales like royal stories. And because a rival will be running some other royal scandal, the printing of the story will always be justified as 'clearing the air', 'ending the specula- tion' etc. By the Sun's own account, the tac- tic worked. On Tuesday it quoted its own circulation director who 'hailed the sales rise as one of the biggest in newspaper his- tory. He said: "I have never known any- thing like it. The Fergie pictures gave a fan- tastic sales rise, then sales shot up dramatically with Dianagate"'.
So I see no reason to disbelieve Mr Knight and the Sun when they say that they support the continuation of the monarchy. The current question people keep asking, `Can the royal family survive all these sto- ries in the tabloids?' is the wrong way round.
It is, rather, 'Can the tabloids survive without a royal family to furnish all these stories?' Whatever else may be said about Mr Knight and the Sun, they are not stupid, and they know where their interest lies. If the monarchy actually did collapse, they would be in desperate trouble. So they are monarchists.
If only they were not. If only they and all the other tabloids that print the stuff and which, as Mr Knight fairly complains, are much less criticised, were republicans. It is a perfectly respectable and honourable, if idiotically rationalist, thing to be. Then we could have a proper argument. But a prop- er argument is something which anyone trading on envy and prurience abhors.
It is important for the success of these traders that they should themselves be gen- uinely morally confused about what they are doing. If they are swayed by gusts of sentimentality, as well as driven by cold commercial calculation, they will stay closer to their readers. The more they can pile on moralistic arguments and believe them, the more disgusting they can be in their meth- ods and the more merciless in their disclo- sures. The more they can be at the feet of the royal family, the easier it is for them to jump at its throat. The more impact they make, the more they become part of the story. Hence the boasting and the threaten- ing: the apotheosis of the power of the pop- ular press would not be the destruction of the monarchy. It would be if it could decide who should and should not sit on the throne.
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