BBC ánd Prince Willuam

Harry has said that Diana was chased to her death while in a relationship with a man who wasn't white. He didn't say it was because she was dating a man who wasn't white but is certainly implying that the media interest he says he's so uncomfortable with, but has been relentlessly seeking since moving to America, is in part due to the fact that his wife isn't white.

I agree with you 3nanny I think William's statement was just right; dignified and eloquent.

Galaxy

Yes be very careful what you wish for. The BBC drives me to distraction at times but it would be a great loss.

Absolutely this.

What would we be left with if the BBC went? Privately owned, individually controlled media, with vested interests at the top who can push whatever agenda they wish.

The BBC may have its faults, but at least it is semi independent and not in the pay of media barons with conflicts of interest galore.

I will still turn to the BBC for news

The BBC has made one, admittedly large, mistake. But the Royal family didn't help Diana - Charles married her knowing that he was in love with someone else and continued that relationship. A rather naive 18 year old thrown in at the deep end. Chased by the press all the time. The press had and still has, a lot to answer for.

The following is an extract from Marina Hyde's column today in the Guardian:

^And so to people yet to take ownership of their own actions. I think we can live without today’s preposterous moralising from much of Fleet Street, who know very well the terrible things they and others did on countless occasions to get stories relating to Diana or her wider family. “Defund the BBC,” was last night’s pontification from former Sun editor Kelvin Mackenzie, who once put Diana’s covertly recorded private phone calls on a premium-rate line so readers could ring in and have a listen. And those were the good years. Half the stuff these guys did in pursuit of Diana stories is, mercifully for them, completely unprintable.

Alas, we will spend the next few days hearing of the BBC’s shame from some of the most shameless hypocrites in human history. The tabloids may not like Prince Harry’s reincarnation as a super-rich Californian wellness bore, but it does have the moral edge over pulling people’s medical records and hacking the phones of murdered 13-year-old girls.

But of course, few have rewritten their own history more than Fleet Street’s Diana-watchers. The overnight timing of the Paris crash meant the early editions of the Sunday papers had already been printed and contained, as usual, large amounts of unfavourable stuff about whatever else Diana had been up to the previous week. “Troubled Prince William will today demand that his mother Princess Diana dump her playboy lover”, ran an exclusive by the News of the World’s Clive Goodman, who probably scraped it from the “troubled” schoolboy’s phone. There were acres in similar vein across the titles. “The Princess, I fear,” feared the Sunday Mirror’s Carole Malone, “suffers from the ‘Open Gob Before Brain Engages’ syndrome – a condition which afflicts the trivial and the brain dead.” When Diana’s death was announced, the reverse ferrets were so total that it’s genuinely quite a surprise the Sunday Mirror didn’t next week salute itself as “the paper that broke the tragic news Di was brain dead”.

As for the editors, the person they secretly canonised was the driver, Henri Paul. Because once it was discovered he was over the alcohol limit, then what happened to Diana in the tunnel couldn’t have been anything to do with the ecosystem in which they (and the chasing paparazzi who supplied them) were such voracious feeders.

Twenty-four years later, a full-spectrum failure to acknowledge any of this means many of these same people now sit and venerate Diana in the course of slagging off her troubled son, Prince Harry (it’s what she would have wanted). They know very well the pain and turmoil of Diana’s final years, having been such a helpful part of it, yet cannot tolerate the understandably damaged child raised amid it.

And so it is that Prince Harry is now locked in his own grimly symbiotic relationship with sections of the British media. He won’t shut up, which is what they claim to want, but don’t, because his every SHAMELESS! AND! DISGRACEFUL! UTTERANCE! drives traffic. Attacks on Harry do huge business, so they continue. He, in turn, can point to those attacks as continued evidence of persecution. (Indeed, his livelihood might end up depending on wounded, marquee interviews. I’m not sure that long-term ratings lie in the Sussexes’ dull-sounding ideas for documentaries in which they themselves do not feature.) This is nearly as toxic a cycle as the one in which Diana was locked, and is unlikely to have a happy ending, or even a happy middle.

I once saw some old news footage in which the Queen and Prince Philip returned home from a royal tour after leaving their children for six months. A mere part of the welcome party, the unsmiling five-year-old Prince Charles waits dutifully – simply required to shake his mother’s hand. Anyone claiming this was entirely normal “in those days” has royal brain worms. Yet Prince Harry’s recent suggestion that neither he nor his father had an especially healthy childhood is regarded as some kind of grotesque blasphemy, mostly by people who would be quite happy to refer to the above vignette as child abuse were anyone other than the Queen involved. These days, what is expected of the royals has become so warped that it is perfectly standard to find MailOnline commenters fuming of Prince Harry “how DARE he bring his mother into this?”

Which brings us to the final group not to own their own actions: the great British public. Millions bought insatiably into Diana’s pain, and newspaper sales spiked for all the most obviously intrusive stories. The pall of blameless sanctimony that descended after her death was a stunning exercise in mass hypocrisy. People were simply incapable of imagining that they too had been part of the ecosystem, and those who pointed it out were demonised by deflection. Private Eye was monstered for its cover, which carried the headline “MEDIA TO BLAME” above a crowd of people outside Buckingham Palace. “The papers are a disgrace,” read one speech bubble. “Yes, I couldn’t get one anywhere,” ran its reply. “Borrow mine,” went a third, “it’s got a picture of the car.” WH Smith banned the edition from its stores, while taking money for the papers hand over fist.

From Diana to Harry, damaged people do damaged and sometimes very damaging things. But it’s important to remember, as far as the royal family is concerned, that the public likes it so much better that way. Royal pain sells far more than royal happiness. Panorama may have lied – but the sales tallies and the traffic figures and the ratings never do^

What do people think of the letter Diana wrote saying she hadn't been shown any documents and had no regrets.

I don't feel comfortable with it but can't quite work out what bothers me about it. Do you think she like Bashir and was trying to help him? Or what?

Or have I misunderstood, I didn't watch the programme last night and just seen some headlines.

Thanks for posting that article Dinahmo, it is very good indeed.

Have I worked it out? Did Bashir use the forged documents with Diana's brother to get access to her, so he did use the documents but Diana was telling the truth that she never saw them?

That's my interpretation theworriedwell.

Great post Dinahmo! Such hypocrisy everywhere regarding this troubled family. Makes my problems look trivial. When will we ever leave these people alone?

Aren't we all forgetting as someone who texted the BBC 9 o'clock news pointed out? None of this would have happened if it hadn't been for their father's behaviour in the first place.
If what is he is reported !!!!! to have done is true. He had a married mistress whom he kept on the relationship with after he married a very young mailable girl and expected her to condone it.
This would affect the children of any marriage. How would they feel to be left with the guilty party after watching their mother suffer.
I know some children who have completely cut their father out of their lives after he treated their mother in a similar way. These two men had to get on with life in the public view at all times no wonder they are so upset when they find out a very vulnerable woman was used by the BBC.
It also might also have made her amenable to Martin Bashiers suggestion of a tell it all interview.

We don’t know do we?

Diana said there were three in the marriage.
Charles said he began his affair after his marriage had broken down.

As in all relationships that end badly, people will believe one or the other, according to their own experiences and how they feel about each party.

Personally, I’m not sure that “sympathetic” interviews are worth much in establishing facts. The hard questions don’t get asked and the inconsistencies don’t get explored.

Smileless2012

That's my interpretation theworriedwell.

Thanks.

Yammy

Aren't we all forgetting as someone who texted the BBC 9 o'clock news pointed out? None of this would have happened if it hadn't been for their father's behaviour in the first place.
If what is he is reported !!!!! to have done is true. He had a married mistress whom he kept on the relationship with after he married a very young mailable girl and expected her to condone it.
This would affect the children of any marriage. How would they feel to be left with the guilty party after watching their mother suffer.
I know some children who have completely cut their father out of their lives after he treated their mother in a similar way. These two men had to get on with life in the public view at all times no wonder they are so upset when they find out a very vulnerable woman was used by the BBC.
It also might also have made her amenable to Martin Bashiers suggestion of a tell it all interview.

I might not be remembering it right but didn't Bashir say PC said the relationship with Camilla had started years after the married? She said she knew that, she could tell when it restarted.

Let's face it she had relationships when she was still with PC. She admitted that about her protection officer, said she was mad about him.

Two wrongs don't make a right but it isn't fair to absolve one and not the other.

Anniebach

Lucca why the sarcasm for my post which was not an opinion
but a fact of the events which caused her death ?

No sarcasm at all. Stating the case.

Stating what case Lucca ?

Washerwoman

I'm sorry for what both those boys went through.But Harry's statement where he clearly says his mother was chased to her death because she was in a relationship with someone who wasn't white .Really ?!

he did say that and its true, I remember the nasty gossip in the newpapers. Mohamed Al Fayed was considered "not one of us", as was his son Dodi.

Doodledog

Galaxy

Yes be very careful what you wish for. The BBC drives me to distraction at times but it would be a great loss.

Absolutely this.

What would we be left with if the BBC went? Privately owned, individually controlled media, with vested interests at the top who can push whatever agenda they wish.

The BBC may have its faults, but at least it is semi independent and not in the pay of media barons with conflicts of interest galore.

"The BBC may have its faults"

Can you say "understatement"?

Why wasn’t the same when she was in a two year affair with
Hasnet Khan .

Would any family welcome Al Fayed and Dodi Fayed ? Dodi Fayed was executive producer of the film Chariots of Fire, he
was thrown of the set by David Putnam for trying to give the cast cocaine

Well said Dinamho. This is/was a seriously dysfunctional family and I cannot comprehend how Diana thought that laying bare the sordid details of their extra marital relationships was ever going to make life any easier for their adolescent and pre-,pubescent sons.

greenlady102

Doodledog

Galaxy

Yes be very careful what you wish for. The BBC drives me to distraction at times but it would be a great loss.

Absolutely this.

What would we be left with if the BBC went? Privately owned, individually controlled media, with vested interests at the top who can push whatever agenda they wish.

The BBC may have its faults, but at least it is semi independent and not in the pay of media barons with conflicts of interest galore.

"The BBC may have its faults"

Can you say "understatement"?

Of course I can - English is my first language. Why the sarcasm?

The UK is lucky to have a broadcaster like the BBC, which is not owned by anyone in particular, and is still independent of the government.

This last point is, of course, why the current government is so keen to accuse it of bias, and to persuade the public that it is bad value for money, and generally to bring it down.

No large organisation with numerous employees is ever going to be without crises and free of 'rotten apples', but on the whole, the BBC is the envy of the world for its independent status.

The newspapers are already in the control of the Right, and whether you have right wing views or not, it should be obvious that hearing one perspective on the world is not good for a population. Having a series of different voices, which are not sponsored by big business or other vested interests, is a rare thing around the world, and we give it up at our peril.

Whatever the mistakes of the BBC, Diana freely chose to do the interview and freely chose to say the things she said. The dysfunctional relationships within the royal family are still the main problem here, not the BBC.

Very true Doodledog.

@suzanne_moore
The year before Charles had admitted adultery and marital breakdown on ITV "Yes ... Until it became irretrievably broken down, us both having tried".
So I kind of think he may have some responsibility too?
This is all bit mad.

I don't know about how much the BBC should get the blame for a dysfunctional marriage where both parties put their needs before their children but the BBC is an international presence and this doesn't nothing for their credibility. I can't think how many times I have heard people of different nationalities say that they turn to the World BBC to get the truth. This is far more damaging than just misleading Princess Diana.