Family album
THE PRESS BILL GRUNDY
A cat may look at the King, but the cats can't look at the Queen, at least according to Lord Devlin, a high luminary of the law. One is tempted to follow Mr Bumble and suggest that if the law supposes that, the law is a ass, a idiot.
For really, what a to-do about some charm- ing family photographs! The Guardian said as much in its leader on Friday last: 'They are the kind that we all like to have in our family albums. Why get hot and bothered about their publication?' The Daily Mail did not agree: 'Any newspaper could have reprinted these photographs. . . . Only the Daily Express did print them,' which nicely slides over the difference between 'printing' and 'reprinting,' i.e. 'lifting' them by photographing the pages of Paris Match. The article then went on: 'The Daily Mail did not hold back simply because 'THE QUEEN was involved. We try to show consideration for the privacy of ever .family in the land.' That leading article appeared on the same page as a picture of Mrs Sheila Thorns in bed after the birth of her sextuplets. Indeed a letter in the Guardian on Saturday asked: 'Could anyone please explain the ethical differ- ence between the Guardian printing a photo- graph of Mrs Sheila Thorns . .. and the Daily Express printing one of the Queen in bed for the same reason?'
Well, to be fair, there are at least two differences; in one case the pictures were, in a sense, stolen (or were they?), in the other they weren't. In one case they were published with permission, in the other without. But I still feel—oh cynicism, what sins are committed in thy name—that the reason the Mail didn't print them was because they weren't offered them. And the same applies to the Mirror, with the added complication that the Mirror's piousness is muddled by the long-standing n'c-Beaver- brook feud. And the feud itself is complicated by the fact that the pictures came to the Express as a result of a long-standing contract between that paper and Paris Match. And who nego- tiated that contract? Why, Mr Edward Picker- ing, now chairman of IPC Newspapers, when he was with Beaverbrook Newspapers. Which explains, if it doesn't actually excuse the curiously muted way the Mirror got out of not having those pictures. I wouldn't have minded if the Mirror had kept quiet about it. Like the Sun, for instance, another :Pc publica- tion. But for the Mirror to go on the front page with a signed explanation by the editor, Mr Lee Howard, which said: 'In view of the statement issued by Buckingham Palace, these pictures—which have been seen by the Daily Mirror [and by everybody else who gets an early edition of the Express?]—will not appear in this newspaper.' Well, ha-ha, if you don't mind my saying so, Mr Howard. The statement from the Palace said: 'The Queen would naturally prefer that they had not been published. For that reason she is unable to approve their future publication.' Which, as the UK Press Gazette was quick to point out: 'is very, very different from disapproving [my stress] of further publi- cation, as some newspapers implied.'
So if the Palace didn't actually disapprove, what other sources of censure could there be? Taste, possibly? Come off it. Mr Marks of the Express is as well brought up as many, and I believe him when he said he thought about it before publishing the pictures, although that implies nothing about exactly how long he did think about it.
Copyright then? In view of the agreement originally negotiated for the Express with Paris Match by Mr Pickering? You must be joking.
Complaints to the Press Council? But the Press Council itself says there haven't been any. Except, of course, for Lord Devlin. Yet after he had told the Express that the Press Council was to consider their publication of `two photographs of Her Majesty The Queen in bed [Bed?] after the birth of Prince Edward' a spokesman from the Palace rang up Derek Marks and said, in the way they have down in that part of Victoria, 'we didn't do it, kid.'
Now, although the Express then went a bit dotty and talked about the Star Chamber, it doesn't weaken their case. What on earth was My Lord Devlin doing reporting them to his own council when the Palace itself didn't care? And why should they? For the News of the World (not tec) found the pictures 'beautiful,' and even reprinted one of them by permission of the Daily Express. The Guardian (of course not u'c) would have liked them in its family album, as we have seen. The People (iPc) thinks the Express was wrong, although in the same edition it admits to having bought pictures, from a Mr Bellisario, of Princess Margaret water ski-ing (now why did it buy and print those, I wonder?). Which leaves the Mirror, which, as Mr John Gordon of the Sunday Express says, 'has never shown any inclination not to print embarrassing pictures of royalty or anybody else.' On this occasion it found itself reduced simply to describing the pictures and then excusing itself for not showing them. Well, I personally found the pictures charming, and, therefore, to the editor of the Mirror I com- mend the title of a book by one of his pre- decessors—Pub/ish and be Damned.
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