It has been a few weeks since the 20th anniversary of the death of Princess Diana and as the world remembers the legacy of her life in numerous documentaries, I feel it is also important to acknowledge the changes that came to British media following her death.
In the years preceding her fatal car crash, Diana had been called “the most hunted person of the modern age”. Everyone loved her and it is easy to see why. Diana was not only a beautiful woman, but she was well known for her charity work around the globe. She was also easy for the people of the United Kingdom and around the world to relate to, especially when compared to her late husband. Diana’s Panorama interview in 1995 gained her tremendous sympathy from the press and the public, but also meant that any news stories about her were a great commodity.
Paparazzi photographers Mark Saunders and Glenn Harvey recalled a chase from 1994 in their book Dicing With Di: The Amazing Adventures of Britain’s Royal Chasers where Harvey dove across the front of Diana's Audi for the perfect shot just before their prey reached the safety of Kensington Palace. For the photographers it was business as usual while chasing the Princess. For Diana it was a living nightmare.
Following her death in Paris, the Paparazzi who chased her through that dark tunnel and the media outlets who bought their photos were vilified by the public at large. Among those who blamed the media for her death were Diana’s brother and her sons. At the time Earl Charles Spencer, Diana’s brother was quoted as to saying "I always believed that the press would kill her in the end". Additionally, Prince Harry recalls in a recent documentary titled Diana, 7 days that one of the hardest things for him to deal with was that the paparazzi who had chased her down in those final moments were to busy taking pictures of her dying in the back of the car to actually help her.
In an effort to prevent an extremely restrictive privacy law being put into place by the British Government, Newspaper editors on Fleet Street took a voluntary step back and declared that they would no longer purchase photographs from the types of photographers who had pursued Diana that night, would extend the rights of privacy to public spaces where a “reasonable expectation of privacy” and gave a much larger protections to young people. The last point was especially important in consideration for the young princes who were 15 and 12 at the time.
Twenty years on and those protections still remain largely in place within Britain. Prince William and his family can become annoyed at the press, but they do not live in fear of it as William’s mother sometimes did. So while undoubtedly as this anniversary passes on, people will remember Diana for her charitable work and for the children that she raised, it is important to recognize that even in the tragedy of her death, the People’s Princess still invoked change with the way the press would act around those she loved most.
I am kind of a nerd for the royals, I loved Diana so much when I was a kid! But yeah, I was raised on magazine covers declaring how much weight she had gained or lost, or what Charles was supposedly doing behind her back or she his. She had NO privacy on anything, ever. I think that it’s interesting that after she died, there were no new women in the family to really pick apart (the press had already been at Camilla for years by that point, it was nothing new for her, same with Fergie) until Kate, and she has handled it so well it’s like a 180. But I think she went into it knowing what her reality would be and being okay with it, whereas I don’t think Diana was nearly as prepared for it when she married Charles. I don’t think the media attention on the royals is entirely gender specific though, I think a lot of it is age too. People want to see how they live, and people are obsessed with youth. I think both Will and Harry have seen a decent share of it, and more so than say Andrew and Fergie’s daughters. Not sure how much that has to do with them not being in line for the throne though. I know for a fact that Harry spends a lot more time in the states than the media realizes, to get away from them I think. But he has a strong network here who help him stay concealed when he comes, and many precautions are taken to stay off the media’s radar. I can’t say if that ever would have worked with Diana. Harry seems to get by with it because he can throw a baseball cap on and no one ever thinks it’s him, but everyone would have recognized her.
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