Thread by @PandaScottish

[thread]

On ethics

On lying

And on how so many

Are using the tragedy of the death of Princess Diana

And the words of her sons

To exploit for their own personal, political or commercial interests

Just as they profited from her life

So they seek to do so in her death

Alas

The Duke of Cambridge

"In an era of fake news"

You listening @CCHQPress ?

https://twitter.com/KensingtonRoyal/status/1395484854272335875

So we are going to go back in time

I am going to quote from a news article

Without telling you when or whom it was published by

That will come later

"Princess Diana tried to commit suicide five times in despair over her marriage to Prince Charles, and Buckingham Palace on Sunday blamed a newspaper circulation war for the media frenzy."

"Diana was said to have flung herself down stairs, cut her wrists with a razor, cut her chest and thighs with a knife, thrown herself at a glass cabinet and cut herself with a lemon slicer in tormented cries for help."

"(the) allegations, (are) said to raise questions about the future of the 1,000-year-old British monarchy."

"the alleged suicide bids, beginning just six months after Diana was married in St. Paul’s Cathedral at age 20, “were not really serious attempts. . . . They were cries for help.”"

Now I omitted several paragraphs from the article

Deliberately

The article was written on June 8th 1992

latimes.com/archives/la-xp…

The paragraphs I chose to omit:

"British newspapers printed allegations that Princess Diana tried to commit suicide five times in despair over her marriage to Prince Charles, and Buckingham Palace on Sunday blamed a newspaper circulation war for the media frenzy."

"The Sunday Times, which over the weekend started serializing Andrew Morton’s book “Diana--Her True Story”"

"But the rival Sunday Telegraph said no one knows what the truth really is. It urged the Royal Family to break tradition and sue for libel if it disputes stories about the prince and his glamorous wife."

"The Sunday Times serialization of Morton’s book follows a story Friday in the Daily Mail, based on another book, Nicholas Davies’ “Diana, a Princess and Her Troubled Marriage,” which said that in 1986 Diana took an overdose of pills."

"A Buckingham Palace spokesman said: “We are not prepared to say how he is reacting or how she is reacting. It is not for us to keep a circulation war going with comments one way or another, because that is what it is all about.”"

"Debate raged across Britain over the accuracy of the allegations and the ethics of reporting the Royal Family’s marital woes. Newspapers jostled to try to outdo the Sunday Times as the royal marriage fell victim to a media frenzy."

"Andrew Neil, editor of the Sunday Times, which is owned by Australian publishing tycoon Rupert Murdoch, staunchly defended publishing installments of the book, but monarchists interviewed on radio were indignant."

“The Sunday Times has done a great wrong in publishing intimate details of the private life of the Prince and Princess of Wales,” said Conservative legislator Sir John Stokes. “This marks a new low level in the national press.”

So to stay in 1992

Here is Andrew Morton

On how profitable the Diana story was

There is a few fascinating quotes I am going to pick out

sivconsultants.com/andrew-morton-…

"What was your first royal assignment?

Chasing Prince Andrew and his then girlfriend Koo Stark to the private Caribbean island of Mustique. "

Mustique you say

That does seem a popular destination

For Prince's and Prime Ministers

"The book trade didn’t think the world was interested in another Diana publication, so early subscriptions were paltry and only 18,000 copies were printed. We subsequently lost sales because there were weren’t enough books to go around."

"It was only when a friend of Diana’s, who had a contact at News International, whispered that my story was true, that Andrew Neil decided to look at it again. The book went on to sell about seven million copies in 80 countries, & I made more than £1m over several years."

"In 1997 the commemorative edition [in which Morton revealed that Princess Diana had been the main source and he had the tapes to prove it] topped the bestseller lists again, selling 180,000 copies in the first week. "

"What was the media reaction to your success?

There was a lot of jealousy. I was dubbed a “tabloid oik from Leeds”. I’m quite sure if I’d been an effete former Etonian, everything would have been fine."

Yes - we can see what happens to etonians in this country

So the Sunday Times under Andrew Neil you say

And here we are in May 2021

Andrew Neil writes

It is very strange

That his story only starts in 1995

That feels

What's the word

Oh yes

Deliberately

dailymail.co.uk/debate/article…

Of course Andrew's court promote his writing

https://twitter.com/JGForsyth/status/1395654024905560069

And of course the Daily Mail promotes it also

https://twitter.com/WestminsterWAG/status/1395508164880179202

Oh yes and see also the Daily Mail

"A WEEK after publishing extracts from Penny Junor's controversial biography of the Prince of Wales, executives at The Mail on Sunday are happily assessing its effect on the paper's fortunes. "

independent.co.uk/arts-entertain…

"It kept the paper in the news for a full week, and boosted circulation by 10 per cent. The pounds 500,000 paid for the rights to the juiciest snippets from the book was money well spent."

"Only a few years ago," says the literary agent Giles Gordon, "Andrew Neil, who was then editor of The Sunday Times, told me that `you people should be paying us to serialise books'." He thought that serialisation amounted to free publicity for publishers.

"The hunger for books feeding off indiscretion or scandal is producing pressure on all sorts of people to consider exposing themselves in autobiography and diaries."

So anyway

Back to the modern day

And the current reaction to it

It is possible to have concerns about the behaviour of Martin Bashir

And also concerns at how others behaved around the sales and feeding frenzy around the Royal Family

https://twitter.com/fleetstreetfox/status/1395663804537659393

https://twitter.com/OwenJones84/status/1395692395874996228

https://twitter.com/AndrewPRLevi/status/1395681655180992515

Then you have Quentin Letts piling in

https://twitter.com/thequentinletts/status/1395491464436613120

Your reminder on Quentin

Princess Diana was number 5 in his top 50 of the people who wrecked Britaom

dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1…

Oh yes see also where Quentin expanded on why Diana was number 5 on his list

Of course you have so so many others jumping in on the pile on on the BBC

https://twitter.com/Independent/status/1395732575105257481

https://twitter.com/JuliaHB1/status/1395722021271707649

https://twitter.com/LBC/status/1395694590817095686

Here's another useful thread

https://twitter.com/Tom___Scott/status/1395682601457922050

The best writer of course @MarinaHyde

“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.”

https://twitter.com/MarinaHyde/status/1395713725013929986

Also Marina

You even have the @UKPrimeMinister @BorisJohnson

Getting involved

Now really

A man whose "Journalistic" career was built on lies, racism and so much else

Wants to talk about ethics

Really?

https://twitter.com/BBCNews/status/1395707049569292290

Your reminder - a lot of these news publications and commentators and politicians seem really upset that Princess Diana was lied to

Here's a reminder

Boris Johnson LIED TO THE QUEEN

Not merely a Princess

Oh yes and on lies more generally

See also:

So if you want to talk about lying and ethics

Fuck off and reflect on one man

Reflect on him

Reflect on those who enabled him

Reflect on those who deflect from what he is

One man at the heart of so much

https://twitter.com/PandaScottish/status/1374286271732928513

@threadreaderapp unroll please