United Kingdom: A press conspiracy to protect Harry

“The British press is known for its ruthless competitiveness, its unruly attitude to authority, and its love-hate obsession with royalty,” said Andrew Edgecliff-Johnson in the Financial Times. This week, however, it found itself being praised by the head of the British army for its “highly responsible attitude” in keeping quiet about the deployment of Prince Harry to Afghanistan. Harry, third in line to the throne, was sent with his unit in December, after the British media agreed to a news blackout. The embargo was broken last week by the American website Drudgereport.com, and Harry was immediately sent home. But the fact that it lasted 10 weeks is being hailed as evidence that patriotism is still alive and well on Fleet Street.

And so is self-interest, said the London Sunday Independent in an editorial. In agreeing to hold back on coverage of Harry in Afghanistan, the media was also banking on an eventual bonanza. That payoff simply came sooner than planned. Once the embargo was broken and Harry hustled out of harm’s way, the coverage of the prince’s exploits sold newspapers at rates not seen since his mother died. “Lavish picture spreads had Harry striding purposefully toward the camera, moodily in shades in the turret of his vehicle, Action Mannish with rifle aimed, pensive on camp bed, unshaven and barking orders, smilingly clubbable with comrades, and, in a photographer’s effort to conjure up visions of Steve McQueen, T-shirted and helmetless astride a motorbike.” The papers all had the same material, because all the photos and all the copy were provided by a single journalist—the only one granted access to Harry and his comrades. If you think about it, the media traded its right to report for the right to disseminate government propaganda.

The one person who has been so rude as to point that out is being pilloried, said Paul Revoir in the London Daily Mail. Jon Snow, a newscaster on Channel 4, sent out a mass e-mail to the press saying “Thank God for Drudge.” Snow’s argument was that the press should not be in the business of muzzling itself to please the government—that such behavior is expected of gutless reporters in Russia or China, not Britain. Army officials and newspapers immediately united in denouncing him, and angry viewers called in to his program to label him a traitor.

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Yet Snow has a point, said Minette Marrin in the London Sunday Times. “There is something alarming about the media being gagged, however willingly.” Sitting on a story is a drastic step we should take only with “an outstandingly good reason,” such as protecting national security. That was not the case here. The press chose to gag itself to allow Harry an opportunity to fight for his country, an opportunity denied last year when he was told he could not join his unit in Iraq. Keeping the prince off the battlefield was the right decision then, and it should have been done again. The presence of such a priceless target for the Taliban put his comrades in terrible peril. “However much one sympathizes with this admirable boy, not one single drop of British blood” should have been risked “simply for the sake of giving Harry a temporary illusion of being normal.”