Nothing comes close to the impact of Diana’s death
These days the details of the crash in that Paris tunnel in 1997 would have been quickly known, but 20 years ago newsgathering looked very different.
Smartphone video, drone footage, live tweeting of a breaking story was still decades away. I was never a diehard Diana fan; the ‘‘fairytale’’ marriage didn’t capture me as it did many teenaged girls, and after that I saw her as other things – courageous and effective in her public work, but often forlorn, lonely, and certainly not free.
But like most who were watching, the night she died is burned into my mind forever. For hours all we had was a picture of the tunnel entrance, parked up on CNN.
Then suddenly, at 4pm, a press conference outside the Pitie´-Salpe´trie`re Hospital, and the announcement that the princess had died. For a long moment everyone in the newsroom was silent, then the studio director, an Irishman legendary for his skills and his swearing, looked at me and growled: ‘‘Run.’’
I was pregnant, so it was more of a breathless waddle down the long corridor to the studio, and a moment to clip on the mic. ‘‘We’re live. Speak!’’ said the Irishman.
On-air, for a minute or so, I gabbled out all the details I could remember of the news conference. I hope it made sense, because those were the first details many New Zealanders will have heard.
This week people on social media have related to me their memories of where they were (watching sport mainly) when we broke into programming. The sense of disbelief was palpable, the control room at TVNZ utterly silent afterwards. When the 6 o’clock bulletin was over I realised I hadn’t changed my white jacket (chosen much earlier in the day) for a black one, and the viewers were not happy about this show of disrespect.
I covered a mass shooting for a newspaper at the age of 19; since then several wars, famine, bombings and massacres but strangely, nothing will ever match the impact of August 31, 1997.
The death of Diana and the News of the World phone-hacking scandal have reined in the worst excesses of the paparazzi. But even more importantly, they have reminded all journalists to think carefully about how we report stories.
Today, everyone has a smartphone camera, everyone has a Twitter account, everyone is a journalist. So all of us need to remember human decency.