And so they have. What other subspecies of journalist can concoct thought-provoking headlines like last week’s “SHUT IT, DI”? I’d love to damn and ridicule these ragpickers of my trade, were it not for one nettlesome fact. Since 1987, they’ve been ahead of the curve on Britain’s biggest news story. And many a high-minded, “serious” broadsheet newspaper and magazine in Britain (and America, too) has had to follow their journalistic lead.
The rat pack helped to create Diana. As her tale went global, first with The Wedding and now with The End, she’s returned the favor and nurtured them–financially, to name but one way. Not that she really meant to. It can’t be denied that in a competitive and declining market, Fleet Street has used Diana and Charles as circulation fodder. It’s also undeniable that la creme de la scum earned that nickname by exaggerating, getting details wrong and taking events out of context.
But the overarching truth is the more important one. Long before those dreadful “Camillagate” and “Squidgygate” tapes convinced the rest of us, the rat pack learned and reported, timidly at first, that something was rotten about the myth of marital bliss that the palace was peddling. This marriage was, from its start, based on false publicity. When the tabloids began to debunk the myth, showing the marriage for what it was, M.P.s railed and bishops looked down their noses. One highbrow newspaper, The Independent, proudly declared its pages “a royal free zone.” All of them were, at best, misguided. “Next time anyone asks, “What use are the tabloids?’ point to the gradual peeling away of The Great Royal Lie,” argues Roy Greenslade, media commentator for The Guardian newspaper. The palace, he says, has been exposed “as an untrustworthy institution.”
Don’t get me wrong. Offer me a choice between being Edward R. Murrow in 1940, reporting eloquently on the German blitz of London, or the Daily Mirror’s James Whitaker in 1996, unearthing the latest tidbit on the royal divorce, and I’d pick Murrow any day. But history turns some strange corners. The War of the Waleses is the world war we’ve got these days, and a perfectly legitimate news story. If Murrow were alive, I think he’d grudgingly tip his hat to the people who’ve covered it best.
