A Battle Royal

The British establishment has been through the wringer in recent years.

First, MPs and peers found their personal standings plummet as the expenses scandal revealed a great many had been bending, and in some cases serially breaking, the rules on their allowances. Huge settlement checks were written, careers fell and some were even imprisoned.

Next came the phone-hacking scandal which saw the voluntary closing by the Murdochs of the 150 year old News of the World and many senior police at the Met swept out of their offices. Almost every week gangs of journalists appear in court for plea hearings before their trials. Some will being go down.

The MPs have had an election since and have put their calamity behind them. The media are still in the midst of the Leveson Inquiry so cannot display any relaxed mood. There have recently been some isolated protesting voices suggesting the Inquiry has had a “chilling effect” on news reporting.

Of course this is all a lot of nonsense. The tabloid editors who are moaning have simply found there is a lot more criticism of their salacious stories and the publics appetite for lurid tales, celebrity intimidation and entrapment appears to have waned somewhat.

The editors have been waiting for an issue where they can fight back. The good old days of humiliation, harassment and blatant false reporting may be gone for now but they cannot let go just yet.

This week they found their opportunity. It was not a tale of a vast environmental cover-up by a multinational. It was not exposing criminal gangs preying on vulnerable people. It concrned a dispute over the publication of a nude picture of Prince Harry.

It would seem this “story” encapsulates the cause the editors want to hold up as emblematic of their “rights” of papers to publish. Former News of the World executive editor, Neil Wallis, took to the TV studios to declare, laughably, “Leveson is… killing investigative journalism in this country.” I would argue paying £10k then printing pictures taken at a drunken party in Vegas does not make you Woodward, nor Bernstein.

Wallis went on. Some might say, too long. “"Newspaper editors, newspaper executives are terrified of controversy now. If they get a controversial story that causes a furore an editor could lose his job, advertisers could be panicked into not advertising in their newspapers, because the mood in the newspaper industry is now so febrile. Some people might say that the Prince Harry story is a classic example of where the newspaper should basically wave two fingers at Leveson … and just stick it in the paper.”

The Sun did that anyway.

Mr Wallis, besides trying to resurrect his PR career, has tried to fix our attention on the wrong target. The embargo on publication was sought by St. James’s Palace (aka Prince Charles) who argued, unconvincingly, it was an invasion of privacy. Those sort of pointless restrictions from the Royal family have been going on for decades and has nothing whatever to do with Leveson.

And to elevate the battle over publishing a pixilated naked Royal to the denying the basic freedoms of the press, shows the tabloid editors for what they are – compulsive recyclers of trivia, nonsense and nudity.