A royal mess with the press
In the 1940s, the British Royal Family asked the Royal Press Officer to negotiate newsreels’ access to the family, particularly the young Princess Elizabeth, ensuring that every aspect of the interaction was micro-managed.
The decision of the former king, Edward VIII, to renounce his throne to marry an American divorcée had been a national trauma. Footage of the young princess who would eventually become the Queen reassured the public that all was well.
Managing boundaries
Everyone could continue keeping calm and carrying on. But the carefully orchestrated encounters with media required someone who could manage the conflicting boundaries of the press and the royal family.
For the royal family, as for other famous people, the media is both a necessity and a bane. They require a certain amount of coverage to justify their existence — a ceremonial role requires great ceremony, after all — contrary to their desire for privacy.
“I need to be seen to be believed,” the Queen famously quipped. The Royal Press Office has operated to carefully manage the family’s media exposure, forever trying to balance what it means to be seen enough and seen too much.
The office exists to feed the media information, access and photographs in exchange for favorable coverage. Adrian Bingham, co-author of the book “Tabloid Century,” noted in an interview that “for decades, the palace and different members of the royal family have had press operations, words in the ear of editors to not run stories, to close certain things down.”
It worked, but it doesn’t work so well anymore, because the royal family is no longer one family. The Prince and Princess of Wales have their own media operation, separate from the king and queen’s, as do most working royals. This means that sometimes one press office will feed stories to the media about another in order to distract from their own issues.
What used to be about protecting and managing a public image has now become a battle of media relations between the houses — carefully posed portraits meant to reassure us that various princes and dukes are relevant, interesting and, thus, worthy of their positions. The War of the Poses, if you will.
Royalty and media intertwined
The relationships between these press offices and the media rely on trust. When that trust is violated, the public suddenly has insight into just how intertwined British royalty and the media really are.
Last week, Kensington Palace (the name of the Prince and Princess of Wales’ operation) released an altered photograph to show that Princess Catherine, who is recovering from “planned abdominal surgery,” was doing well. After several credible news agencies killed the photo, Kensington Palace released a statement attributed to the Princess herself: “Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing.”
But in the age of the internet, this kind of statement was bound to be picked apart. Why would the Princess of Wales edit a photograph herself as she’s recovering from a procedure so invasive that she requires complete privacy? And why would that photograph be distributed with so many obvious errors?
It would not have been hard to fix things. A selfie from the princess might not be possible, but the Kensington Palace press office seems to be running into flat walls thinking they’re tunnels.
Doesn’t she have a press office? Reader, she does. But what they are doing, no one is sure. There was no need to release that photograph. Kensington Palace had said the princess would be unavailable until April. While online gossip grew, they could have simply let the dogs bark.
Now, the photograph has caused more harm than good to their brand as future monarchs. Agence France-Presse global news director Phil Chetwynd told BBC news radio that Kensington Palace is no longer considered a trusted source. “Like with anything, when you’re let down by a source, the bar is raised,” he said.
Chetwynd noted that AFP did ask Kensington Palace to provide the original photograph, but the news agency never received a reply. The Sunday Times quoted someone described as “a friend and adviser to the couple,” who said: “In the history of imagecropping and photo-altering to tell a story, a lot of the reaction from picture agencies was hypocritical.”
Staying quiet
Those are some strong (and unsubstantiated), fighting words from the Prince and Princess of Wales’ anonymous advisorfriend. Maybe it’s time for Kensington Palace’s media operation to hire someone who knows how to stay quiet when staying quiet is the best policy.
Mr. Bingham said: “The royal family is the national soap opera in Britain.” In America, we are accustomed to our leaders going to war with the media. But the British have always painted their royal family as being above the fray. To see them engage in this manner is shocking, but also fascinating.