Tabloid-watch: Glorious Diana humbug.
You might recall that earlier in the year Channel 4 came under heavy pressure, both from the tabloids and as a result of their fury, Prince Harry and William themselves, to pull a documentary that was alleged to contain images of Princess Diana lying in the smashed Mercedes in the Paris tunnel, being treated before she died. While Channel 4 quite rightly refused to remove the programme from the schedules, it obscured one image to "avoid any unwarranted intrusion into their [the Princes'] privacy or that of their families".
At the time Private Eye pointed out that the Scum, one of those newspapers noisily complaining about this latest unwarranted distress to the Princess's children, had in fact already previously published the photograph at the centre of the whole storm, also blanked out, splashing it on the front page when an Italian magazine went ahead with an article that used the already freely available on the internet photographs of the late Princess receiving treatment.
Fast forward to yesterday, which saw the opening of the inquest into Diana's death, only 10 years' after the fact, and the release of a number of previously held back photographs, including those that see inside the car a matter of minutes before the crash that killed three of the occupants and badly injured Fayed's bodyguard. They clearly show all three of those in the picture, Henri Paul, Trevor Rees-Jones and Diana, with her back to the camera, looking highly agitated and trying to get away from the paparazzi that were taking the shots we're now seeing for the first time.
How then did the tabloids (and Telegraph) react to the release of these potentially highly insensitive and upsetting set of photographs? Why, by splashing them all over their front pages with appropriately sensational headlines of course!
While these photographs are central to the inquest, there was no need whatsoever for them to be published in such a way, but then with the tabloids ever more desperate to boost their circulation it was no brainer decision, even if it shows how flagrantly hypocritical their faux-outrage over the Channel 4 documentary was, or indeed last year's publication of the same photographs by the Italian magazine, coming at the same time as some genuinely "shocking, sickening, outrageous" photographs were emerging from both Israel and Lebanon. Amazingly, the Express resisted the temptation to throw them on their front page, although I have no doubts that they're used inside. The Grauniad's coverage of the inquest, written in a humourous style by Stephen Bates, managed to avoid using them; the tabloids, regardless of their past attempts to savage anyone who dares to impugn either her memory or publish the graphic photographs of her passing, had no such qualms.
The whole inquest is a pointless, hugely expensive waste of time. We know how and why Diana died; as a result of a tragic car accident, exacerbated by the presence of paparazzi desperate for shots of both Dodi and the princess, something which was also not helped by how the driver, Henri Paul, having taken a toxic mix of anti-depressants and alcohol, was clearly unfit to be in change of a motor vehicle. It's also quite possible that both Diana and Dodi would have survived if they had been wearing their seat belts. All of this has already been set out in Lord Stevens' exhaustive report that considered all the conspiracy theories that will be debunked once again, this time in court, and found that they were complete bunkum.
This is all being done for the benefit of a man who is already certain of what happened. Whether it's because of vanity, guilt, pigheadedness, denial or a vendetta against the British establishment that denied him a passport is impossible to know for sure perhaps without a psychiatrist intervening, but Mohamed Al-Fayed is never going to be satisfied until a court decides that the accident was in fact murder, something which is never going to happen. Why we are continuing to indulge this wealthy egomaniac is the only question remaining about what happened that night, and it's one which the court cannot pass judgment on.
At the time Private Eye pointed out that the Scum, one of those newspapers noisily complaining about this latest unwarranted distress to the Princess's children, had in fact already previously published the photograph at the centre of the whole storm, also blanked out, splashing it on the front page when an Italian magazine went ahead with an article that used the already freely available on the internet photographs of the late Princess receiving treatment.
Fast forward to yesterday, which saw the opening of the inquest into Diana's death, only 10 years' after the fact, and the release of a number of previously held back photographs, including those that see inside the car a matter of minutes before the crash that killed three of the occupants and badly injured Fayed's bodyguard. They clearly show all three of those in the picture, Henri Paul, Trevor Rees-Jones and Diana, with her back to the camera, looking highly agitated and trying to get away from the paparazzi that were taking the shots we're now seeing for the first time.
How then did the tabloids (and Telegraph) react to the release of these potentially highly insensitive and upsetting set of photographs? Why, by splashing them all over their front pages with appropriately sensational headlines of course!
While these photographs are central to the inquest, there was no need whatsoever for them to be published in such a way, but then with the tabloids ever more desperate to boost their circulation it was no brainer decision, even if it shows how flagrantly hypocritical their faux-outrage over the Channel 4 documentary was, or indeed last year's publication of the same photographs by the Italian magazine, coming at the same time as some genuinely "shocking, sickening, outrageous" photographs were emerging from both Israel and Lebanon. Amazingly, the Express resisted the temptation to throw them on their front page, although I have no doubts that they're used inside. The Grauniad's coverage of the inquest, written in a humourous style by Stephen Bates, managed to avoid using them; the tabloids, regardless of their past attempts to savage anyone who dares to impugn either her memory or publish the graphic photographs of her passing, had no such qualms.The whole inquest is a pointless, hugely expensive waste of time. We know how and why Diana died; as a result of a tragic car accident, exacerbated by the presence of paparazzi desperate for shots of both Dodi and the princess, something which was also not helped by how the driver, Henri Paul, having taken a toxic mix of anti-depressants and alcohol, was clearly unfit to be in change of a motor vehicle. It's also quite possible that both Diana and Dodi would have survived if they had been wearing their seat belts. All of this has already been set out in Lord Stevens' exhaustive report that considered all the conspiracy theories that will be debunked once again, this time in court, and found that they were complete bunkum.
This is all being done for the benefit of a man who is already certain of what happened. Whether it's because of vanity, guilt, pigheadedness, denial or a vendetta against the British establishment that denied him a passport is impossible to know for sure perhaps without a psychiatrist intervening, but Mohamed Al-Fayed is never going to be satisfied until a court decides that the accident was in fact murder, something which is never going to happen. Why we are continuing to indulge this wealthy egomaniac is the only question remaining about what happened that night, and it's one which the court cannot pass judgment on.
Labels: Diana inquest, humbug, Mohamed Al-Fayed, Princess Diana, tabloid hypocrisy
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