MEDIA STUDIES
A case of intrusion in the public interest
STEPHEN GLOVER
My first reaction to the tabloids' pub- lication of the 'Di and Dodi' pictures was that they shouldn't have done it. I mean the newspapers, not the Princess of Wales and her Egyptian friend. Was there ever a more clear-cut invasion of two people's privacy? There they were, Di and Dodi, relaxing on Dodi's 'gin palace', and there also, 500 yards away, was the Italian paparazzo Mario Brenna with his telephoto lens.
As I tut-tutted my way through the pho- tographs in the Sunday Mirror, and then in Monday's Daily Mail and Sun, it seemed an open-and-shut case. Newspapers had no business to publish such stuff. The asperity of this judgment was scarcely softened by the low quality of Mario's pictures — the result of his being so far from his prey — or by their inconclusive nature. Much may have been left to the imagination, but what was published still amounted to an unwar- ranted invasion of privacy. This was the sort of thing that would annoy Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian. He recently delivered a well- meaning lecture defending 'the right — and duty — of a free press to be able to report freely on matters of public importance'. However, Mr Rusbridger was stern on tabloids that pry into the private lives of the famous and the not-so-famous. 'I would happily sacrifice the love life of a BBC weather forecaster to 11 million prurient eyes,' he said, 'if it meant that the courts would give greater protection to papers or broadcasters reporting corruption or dis- honesty in public life.' The 'Di and Dodi' photographs evidently came in the weather forecasting and pruri- ence category, since Mr Rusbridger's own paper dealt with them loftily. The other broadsheets, while also not passing up the opportunity to tell the story, were equally superior. They did not publish editorials attempting a public interest defence of the pictures. It was simply another example of tabloid vulgarity and excess. The Daily Mir- ror's faking of a 'Di and Dodi' picture last Saturday (the paper having missed out to its Sunday sister on the bidding for the real photos) was adduced as further proof of tabloid idiocy. So was the News of the World's front-page picture of Dodi canoodling with a blonde whom we were invited to believe was the Princess. Only the small print of the caption told us she was Dodi's former wife.
For some time I went along with the bien pensant view that the photographs were intrusive. And then I began to reflect that the Princess of Wales is a very unusual pub- lic person. She has an intimate relationship with the tabloids. In this respect she is strikingly different from other public fig- ures such as, say, Mother Teresa or Norma Major. Only a few weeks ago she held an impromptu press conference in her bathing costume on the side of a speedboat with assorted tabloid hacks. She has spin doctors constantly confiding her side of any story to sympathetic tabloid journalists, and she is on friendly terms with several of them. On one occasion she briefed Richard Kay of the Daily Mail in her own car.
In short, she lives with and off the tabloid press, and uses and manipulates it skilfully for her own ends. Her behaviour in this respect is indistinguishable from that of supermodels or Hollywood stars whose PR representatives have a similarly intimate love-hate relationship with the tabloids. She is not a public person who has done everything possible to resist the advances of newspapers. In that case she would have every right to expect her privacy to be respected. She is a public person who has voluntarily compromised her own privacy and whispered her own secrets, most famously to the tabloid reporter Andrew Morton. Not unnaturally, the tabloids come back for more.
Perhaps, though, Dodi himself has a right to privacy? In normal circumstances, yes. He is a very minor public figure and, apart from an occasional disinclination to settle his bills promptly, generally blameless. The trouble is that he has chosen to befriend the mother of our future King. This might not matter very much if he were the son of a virtuous and obscure Egyptian businessman. But his father, Mohamed Al Fayed, is one of the most controversial and disquieting figures in Britain. Mr Al Fayed has been refused British citizenship for reasons that have never been divulged. He may be the model `They're very blurred — perhaps we got the Al Fayeds' by mistake.' of decency — indeed, he gives generously to charities — but by his own admission he has caused envelopes full of cash to be passed to at least two Tory MPs by way of douceurs, and he has secretly videotaped private con- versations with friend and foe.
Mr Al Fayed is a very rare bird. Whether he has been misprized, I do not know. But surely it is in the public interest for us to be aware that the Princess of Wales has a close relationship with the son of such a man, who, rather alarmingly, is said not only to smile on the liaison but virtually to have devised it. And the only way of estab- lishing that this bizarre relationship exists is to publish photographs confirming it. If the Princess can be said to have forfeited her right to privacy on account of her closeness to the tabloids, her reckless association with Mr Al Fayed's son amounts to a sec- ond forfeiture.
So I am on the side of the vulgar tabloids. (The Daily Mirror's and News of the World's misleading of their readers was idiotic, but that is another issue.) The publication of these pictures was definitely in the public interest — not least the one, published by the Sun, showing Princes William and Harry on the boat with Dodi. (What on earth were they doing there?) The whole case shows how difficult it would be to frame a satisfactory law of privacy — talk of which is being revived by the government. How can reasonable people agree about what constitutes the public interest? As the `Di and Dodi' affair demonstrates, what for one man is invasive tittle-tattle is for anoth- er very much part of the public interest.
Iwas unable last week to write about John Major's resignation honours. Much has been made of his mean-spirited exclusion of the former chancellor, Norman Lamont. Much more mean-spirited, in my view, was his fail- ure to acknowledge a man who was for a time his only eloquent advocate in Fleet Street. I speak of Stewart Steven, former editor of the London Evening Standard. How many times did Mr Steven travel across London to hold Mr Major's trembling hand, or listen patiently on the telephone to his woes, before clearing the leader page for a rousing and heartfelt defence with his own pen? Margaret Thatcher remembered her loyal journalistic supporters but John Major has typically forgotten the truest supporter he ever had.
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