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In defence of The Sun

August 24, 2012 2:30 pm

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Boy meets girl. Boy takes girl back to penthouse apartment for a game of ‘strip billiards’. Boy is not very good at billiards. Boy has picture taken with girl (who, it appears, is equally bad at the game). Some wag present takes photos of proceedings. Pictures of this scene of youthful exuberance launch into cyberspace.

But this is no ordinary young man. Prince Harry (for it is he) is third in line to the throne. This presents a not unsubstantial problem for royal minders who have done so much to airbrush his previous indelicacies. As long as the Monarchy matters so does Harry’s proximity to it.

It is, in Walter Bagehot’s famous phrase, ‘the dignified part of the constitution’, which endures in public estimation because it never lets ‘daylight in on magic’.

Not so much daylight in this instance as the flash of a digital camera, but the point is the same. Once we see the Royals as mere mortals we start to wonder what gives them the right – the hereditary, nay divine right, to sit above us?

Everything in this game is about perception. This is why St. James’ Palace officials have swung into action, urging UK media organisations not to publish the pictures. Only for The Sun to do so this morning.

The enduring problem for the Royal Family is that there is no easy demarcation line between their public role and private freedom. Prince Harry’s position (as the spare to the heir’s heir) is owed to an accident of birth rather than having earned any mandate.

It is easier when holding MPs accountable for their public duties to determine where that line is. If a bunch of MPs on a select committee junket were caught playing strip billiards in the penthouse of a five-star hotel with young women, the reaction would be predictable and the consequences summary.

We would not be complaining about intrusion into their privacy but about how they were letting the side down and demeaning their office, not to mention wasting taxpayers’ money. We would defend our right to know what the buggers were getting up to.

But if an MP was caught in similar circumstances on holiday, paid for out of their own pocket, they would have an absolute right to have their frolicking treated as a private matter.

The royals, in contrast, have no on/off switch. Their very existence is a public role – and one we are obliged to pay for through the civil list. Of course Harry didn’t ask for this, but if its privacy he craves, then he can always renounce his role and opt to live as a private figure.

The Sun may be guilty of many things, but on this occasion all the paper has done is prick the pomposity of the Royal Family’s flunkies in thinking they can serve the equivalent of a D-Notice on the British media just because they have a public relations problem.

Are we obliged to forget what many of us have already seen? Are we expected to observe a self-denying ordinance from using the internet? I first saw the photos of Harry courtesy of that radical organ of dissent The Daily Telegraph, which helpfully hyperlinked to the TMZ gossip site which originally broke the story. The words horse, bolted and stable door seem oddly appropriate.

The Sun was right to publish in the interests, both of press freedom and to defend the right of we, the Monarch’s subjects, the tax-paying public, to know what these special, exulted people do with the public money that sustains the lifestyles to which they have become all too accustomed.

This said, Prince Harry seems a decent enough sort to me. Personally, he passes my ‘I’d have a pint with him’ test. But that’s the problem. Once we peer into their rarefied world we see that our royals, like Hans Christian Anderson’s famous Emperor, are wearing no clothes.

Literally, it turns out.

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  • AlanGiles

    Anybody who had the prurience to want to see the photographs would have been able to do so yesterday, as the BBC reported they were widely available on the internet. Frankly, I don’t think he is a pretty sight clothed let alone au naturel. Not for me, and yet another good reason to go nowhere near the Sun “newspaper”.

    That said, he is old enough to know better,  and even he can’t be so daft that he doesn’t know there are camera phones and the like.  I just hope his poor old grandad isn’t being allowed the Sun in hospital.

  • http://twitter.com/ytfcbadger Martin Baker

    “to defend the right of we, the Monarch’s subjects, the tax-paying public, to know what these special, exulted people do with the public money” – so what you’re pretty much saying is that the Royal Family have zero right to privacy, because we (the taxpayer) demand our right to the titilation caused by being able to view Prince Harry’s arse?

    BREAKING NEWS: The Royal Family sometimes get naked. The Royal Family sometimes frolick with members of the opposite sex whilst they’re on holiday. Big deal. This isn’t headline news – particularly when The Sun have taken the best part of two days to print it.

    I’m no Royalist, and probably in a referendum would probably vote for a Republic. However, once we accept the country’s constitution as a monarchy does that really give us the rights to see them naked in their own private room? Where do you draw the line now – what if Prince Harry was having sex with the girl in the photo – is that okay?

    You’re also somewhat falling into The Sun’s own trap. They may well claim this is about the ‘Freedom of the Press’ and about the ‘public’s right to know’. However, even those who didn’t google the photos the day before already knew from the descriptions given in the press. The words “Souvenir Edition” put on the front page of The Sun, might give you a clearer idea of what their actual motives were. If they cared about the ‘public’s right to know’ so much, then they wouldn’t have buried their coverage of Leveson and the key arrests of people associated with News International so deep into their rag. Printing the pictures is purely and simply a means for The Sun to stick two fingers up to Leveson, whilst increasing their circulation.

  • http://twitter.com/waterwards dave stone

    ”
     he passes my ‘I’d have a pint with him’ test.”

    Wasn’t that the whole point of the this exercise – to show the young Royal as being no different to any other chap of the same age who one might bump into down the pub?

    Rather than pricking the pomposity of the Royal Families flunkies the Sun has stepped in for spin-doctor duty and delivered with distinction (according Radio 4 news there have been no complaints from Buck Palace).

    It is very important for the Royals to be perceived as being ‘normal’, even if they’re not – this is because no one believes in the magic anymore – we’ve grown up. 

    And so it is that naked has become the best disguise.

    • Hugh

       Just to be clear: are you are arguing that Harry was deliberately photoed butt-naked, arranged to have the photos sold to a website, then the Buckingham Palace press team ostensibly put out a request to papers not to publish, but on the sly giving the wink to the Sun to do so – all so that the public could be convinced that Harry is normal (beacuse don’t we all end up playing strip billiards in Vegas with bikini clad girls every once in a while)?

      Or are you suggesting the Sun came up with this brilliant ruse on its own, figuring out that despite the request, Buckingham Palace actually wanted the pictures published – as opposed to simply trying to sell papers?

      Either way, do you think you might be over-thinking this a tad?

  • KevinM123

    The interesting thing about The Sun’s editorial choice is that it is effectively running a 48 hour old story. Can’t think of a similar example of  the paper splashing with what is, in effect, old news…

    The reason it can do so, I guess, is down to the incompetent PR handling of this issue. Once the pics went viral they should have let it be. Too late then. Instead the Royals’ response to a crisis has been to create another crisis, exerting its unelected power and influence to deter the media from using the pics. 

    Which, perversely, makes the argument that they are powerful and unelected, thus making it fair game to scrutinise what they are doing.

    • Hugh

       That’s a good point: The Palace’s pressure on newspapers not to publish these  in itself makes the pictures newsworthy and, I’d argue, their publication in the public interest.

  • PeterJukes

    Royalty is an exception. Because dynastic succession is determined by sexual congress, the public and private blur.

    But that’s not the case with Milly Dowler and the thousands of others who were victims of privacy intrusion not for the public interest but for prurience and private commercial gain

    In the important run up to Leveson’s recommendations, we mustn’t let old straw dogs like this distract us

    • Hugh

       It’s important in the run up to Leevson’s recommendations that we remember that the  hacking of Milly Dowler’s phone is already illegal.

  • Daniel Speight

    I suspect it shows how far Rupert Murdoch has moved away from some sections of the establishment. He still feels he is strong enough to take the on both the palace and Cameron. Interesting, especially as I don’t have a dog in this fight.

    Still it would be nice (well not really) if someone had some photos of old Rupert banging away in his bedroom.

  • Brumanuensis

    This is a bit ‘one tabloid editor defends another tabloid editor’. There is no public interest in publishing the photos, as they show neither wrong-doing, nor inappropriate behaviour. The only motivation is salacious muckraking. I’m sure Harry is embarrassed, but this is an open-and-shut case of breach of privacy. The fact he happens to be a public figure does not deprive of a right to privacy.

    As some commentators have noted, how stupid is it for The Sun to do this. Leveson must be looking at this and concluding, rightly, that the tabloids are completely incapable of self-regulation. The Sun have done harm to their own cause by publishing these pictures.

    • Hugh

       Are you perhaps confusing him with Kevin Maguire? On the point, following your reasoning I think we’d have to conclude there’s no public interest in reporting the story at all – and I think that’s arguable. He’s not only a public figure; as part of the civil list, he’s publicly funded. He also in a sense (since he’s not abandoned his royal role), a representative of the country and its head of state. Details of his behaviour I’d argue are in the public interest. Furthermore, if the papers are to be banned, should we also be trying to regulate blogs to stop them covering this sort of stuff? Frankly the rights of free speech are more important than the rights of some very rich people to keep their (not terribly private, actually) behaviour from being discussed.

      • KevinM123

        Hugh – extremely well put.

  • http://twitter.com/ytfcbadger Martin Baker

    ” in the interests, both of press freedom and to defend the right of we, the Monarch’s subjects, the tax-paying public, to know what these special, exulted people do with the public money”

    So what you’re pretty much saying is that the Royal Family have no rights to privacy whatsoever, because our ‘taxpayer’s money’ gives us the right to the titilation we get from seeing photos of Prince Harry’s bum?

    I’m no Royalist whatsoever but I do think that whilst you’ve got the principle of a constitution that has a monarchy that they have the right to privacy (as described in the Press Complaints Commission’s Code of Conduct for newspapers that The Sun has blatantly ignored). Prince Harry was not breaking the law. He was inside his own hotel and in his own room.

    I also think you’re falling into the trap of the illusion that The Sun wants you to believe, that this is an issue of ‘press freedom’ or one of something being ‘in the public interest’. The very fact that they have ‘Souvenir Edition’ emblazoned on their front page shows you what their motives are. If The Sun really believed in publishing things that are ‘in the public interest’ then why did they minimise their coverage of the Leveson enquiry and the arrests of News International employees – surely their readers had the right to see such events and read about them – The Sun acted as if those events hadn’t happened. Surely if they believed in such high moral principles, they’d have let their readership know the truth, instead of covering it up?

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001102865655 John Ruddy

    I’m sorry, but there is no possible defence of the Sun. About anything.

  • jaime taurosangastre candelas

    I assumed that it was because the Sun newspaper had spotted that some percentage (30%?) of the population did not have internet access and so could not if they wanted look at the picture online, and that there were extra copies of newspapers to be sold as a result.

    Surely everything the Sun does is money-related?  Does anyone buy it for “news”? (that is also my view of the Daily Mail).

    I agree Brum’s view that this was not really in the public interest although without his legal training and ability to define that; this decision by the Sun is profiting from public gossip, which is not the same.

    • Brumanuensis

      To be honest, Jaime, there’s not really a fixed legal definition of ‘the public interest’, although the guidelines on defamation claims sometimes help.

      The MoJ did commission this paper, which might help elucidate matters somewhat: http://www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/publications/research-and-analysis/lsrc/defining_the_public_interest.PDF

    • AlanGiles

       You are probably right, Jaime, but isn’t that a sad reflection on society that they want to gawp at pictures of that nature, and that there is a newspaper happy to exploit the weakness of voyeurs?. I am sure they must have increased their “readership” yesterday, but it begs the question as to why people want this sort of tittilation – if nothing else it shows society hasn’t moved on in 20 years. Then, the public were buying  copies of a red top tabloid to see the antics of the then Duchess of York making a fool of herself on a beach with a “friend”

      • http://twitter.com/waterwards dave stone

        To some extent people have become conditioned to expect non-news from tabloid journalism. And the Establishment has become complicit – hence the fore-fronting of presentational style: standing outside No. 10 with a cup of tea, pictures of Cameron on a Cornish Beach, baby-kissing during election campaigns and Gordon Brown’s embarrassing attempts at humour.

        Oddly, concern for principle springs from an unexpected quarter: Elisabeth Murdoch speaking at the TV festival in Edinburgh: 

        “”We need to learn how to be comfortable with articulating purpose and reject the idea that money is the only effective measure of all things or that the free market is the only sorting mechanism.”

        Good Lord! While I have yet to recover from Andy Burnham’s outrageously hyporcritical flip-flopping over the NHS-Global proposals (prioritising NHS resources for the international elite) I suppose I should prepare myself for a further shock: Labour’s PLP denouncing Elisabeth as a dangerous radical who should be denied access to influence.

        • Brumanuensis

          Elisabeth Murdoch’s remarks are one of the few occasions in my life where a public figure has said something that genuinely surprised me. All credit to her, I suppose. A much better effort than her brother’s now infamous attack on the BBC.

  • MonkeyBot5000

    But if an MP was caught in similar circumstances on holiday, paid for out of their own pocket,

    How many army captains could afford that suite out of their own pocket?

    • KevinM123

      Exactly. And for that matter I wonder how many non-graduate army captains we  have?

    • Hugh

       Exactly. The privacy law is a tool that seems primarily designed to protect the rich.

  • http://twitter.com/ytfcbadger Martin Baker

    ” in the interests, both of press freedom and to defend the right of we, the Monarch’s subjects, the tax-paying public, to know what these special, exulted people do with the public money”
    So what you’re pretty much saying is that the Royal Family have no rights to privacy whatsoever, because our ‘taxpayer’s money’ gives us the right to the titilation we get from seeing photos of Prince Harry’s bum?
    I’m no Royalist whatsoever but I do think that whilst you’ve got the principle of a constitution that has a monarchy that they have the right to privacy (as described in the Press Complaints Commission’s Code of Conduct for newspapers that The Sun has blatantly ignored). Prince Harry was not breaking the law. He was inside his own hotel and in his own room.
    I also think you’re falling into the trap of the illusion that The Sun wants you to believe, that this is an issue of ‘press freedom’ or one of something being ‘in the public interest’. The very fact that they have ‘Souvenir Edition’ emblazoned on their front page shows you what their motives are. If The Sun really believed in publishing things that are ‘in the public interest’ then why did they minimise their coverage of the Leveson enquiry and the arrests of News International employees – surely their readers had the right to see such events and read about them – The Sun acted as if those events hadn’t happened. Surely if they believed in such high moral principles, they’d have let their readership know the truth, instead of covering it up?

  • Hamish Dewar

    The only ‘public interest’ would be if it helps the Naked Rambler to avoid another prison sentence.

  • http://twitter.com/waterwards dave stone

    Oh come on now, what spirited young chap hasn’t dropped his trousers in a bar on a Friday night? All, I would imagine, except the feverishly ambitious who harbour the hope of a political career – hence a political class who don’t look at all like those they are supposed to represent.

    It’s par for the course – it happens and if you’re mega-famous it’s bound to hit the media. If there was any possibility of reputational harm then the Palace’s well practiced PR people would have been on the case before it happened.

    So, no harm done. And Facebook activity in favour of the Prince is booming – it’s a PR success.

    And as for “over-thinking” – I doubt I would have dropped my own trousers so often had I been gifted that capability.

    • Hugh

       ”the Palace’s well practiced PR people would have been on the case before it happened.”

      Leaving aside the fact that the Palace’s PR people have proved themselves time and again to be amongst the most inept on earth, my (admittedly limited) experience of PR would suggest that expecting them to foresee his desire to play strip billiards and prevent it is a trifle ambitious.

      A PR success it may be (I’ve no real idea how seeing a royal live it up as an MTV playboy plays with the public), but it quite plainly wasn’t planned in any respect.

    • Jeff_Harvey

      The point is here we have a public figure who has dropped multiple clangers and who is under the most intense scrutiny behaving in a ridiculous fashion, in mixed company, in a foreign country and being photographed while doing do. Anybody in such a privileged position who allows something like this to happen to themselves involuntarily must be astonishingly naive not to say stupid. Prince Harry MUST have known he would be a lifelong target for a scandal like this; the guy is twenty-seven years old for goodness sake and a captain in the British army.

      What a Wally!

  • Brumanuensis

    Yes, you’re right Hugh, I was thinking of Maguire. Mea culpa.

    I don’t see what reproducing the photos adds to the story. It’s one thing to report it – i.e. Harry has naked photographs taken of him – but including the photos doesn’t add to the discussion. We don’t need to see them to have an opinion on the issue and as such it’s just a gratuitous additional invasion of privacy. The whole point of freedom of speech is that it facilitates the uncovering of the truth, but publishing the photos doesn’t reveal anything we don’t already know about the case. It also sets a bad example to society, by encouraging voyeurism.

    I also understand that Harry’s bill was waived by the hotel manager, according to the BBC, so the cost to the taxpayer was less than we might think. That is more interesting and relevant than any number of naked pictures, in that it reveals an unhealthy culture of deference towards royalty. Frankly, we all know Harry has nothing to do most of the time and that his constitutional importance is roughly nil, in the grand scheme of things. It’s not as if he’s behaving like his Uncle Andrew and hob-nobbing with dictatorships.

    • geedee0520

       ’Frankly, we all know Harry has nothing to do most of the time’

      Apart from being in the Army, flying his Apache helicopter and trivial things like that.

      You guys do realise that the vast majority of men in the UK think ‘brilliant – wish that was me’ and a lot of young women think ‘ wish I was there’ don’t you?

      27 year old single man has romp with young women in Las Vegas shocker.

    • Hugh

      “I don’t see what reproducing the photos adds to the story.”

      The whole story is that he was photographed naked and the photos published online – the photos are pretty intrinsic to it.  Even the original story – Harry played strip billiards with a bunch of strangers doesn’t really work without the pictures. The paper’s have no responsibility to be high minded and add to the discussion; their job is to tell the story in an engaging way.

      Nor is it a “gratuitous additional invasion of privacy”. It’s barely an invasion of privacy at all: It’s a little unclear from the story but there seems to be a minimum of seven other people in the room (and possibly a lot more as far as I can tell) where Harry stripped off. If there is to be a privacy law (and clearly the press shouldn’t have an absolute right to photograph whoever, whenever they like) I’d argue it would best operate as a principle of equity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equity_%28law%29). That would allow flexibility to ensure those seeking to protect their “privacy” had shown some respect for it themselves in their own conduct.

  • http://twitter.com/amergin074 Arthur Seeley

    If you think The Sun published in the public’s interest or in the interest of press freedom you are livng in Cloud Cuckoo Land. They printed it because it was prurient and salacious and by so doing they have sunk lower than the gutter they normally snout and trough in.
    If they are so interested in the public interest why have they never published anything about the Levison Enquiry or Rebkkah Brookes upcoming trial.
    I for one do not need the pictures to show me that Prince Harry is a waste of space. Still it makes a change from Pippa’s bum or Cambridge’s bloody glued on smile.

  • http://twitter.com/waterwards dave stone
  • Brumanuensis

    “You guys do realise that the vast majority of men in the UK think ‘brilliant – wish that was me’ and a lot of young women think ‘ wish I was there’ don’t you?”

    They might, but there’s no need to encourage them.

  • Brumanuensis

    But we don’t need the photos to be aware of any issues this raises. We don’t need to see Prince Harry’s pubic hair to be able to discuss whether allowing himself to get in this position is indicative of immaturity or poor judgement. I don’t even know how strip billiards would work, but the basic point – a member of the royal family takes their clothes off in mixed company – doesn’t need any photographic evidence to add to it. The Profumo Affair didn’t suffer from lack of such evidence, after all.

    I’m all for using equity and there is a discussion to be had about shifting social norms about privacy – there was an interesting article in Forbes a little while back about how not having a social media presence was seen as a ‘red flag’ for some employers. But if we used your definition – or what I take it you are implying – of privacy, taking illicit photos at a private dinner party and then circulating them publicly, would not constitute an invasion of privacy. If Harry had stripped off on Oxford Street, then yes, I think your logic would apply. But this was a private gathering and there was, so far as I can gather, no intention that its contents would be made public. There is a certain implied trust that people who are your guests will not abuse the hospitality of a host and that is precisely what the individuals who took and disseminated the photographs have done. In the absence of illegality or grossly inappropriate behaviour, I don’t think there can be any justification for abusing that trust.

    (Obviously super-injunctions and injunctions are a very controversial area and I won’t pretend that all suits for invasion of privacy are justified. However I do think this is a pretty clear-cut instance of where the claimant has legitimate grounds for complaint).

  • Hugh

    @Brumanuensis “If  we used your definition – or what I take it you are implying – of
    privacy, taking illicit photos at a private dinner party and then
    circulating them publicly, would not constitute an invasion of privacy”

    Not at all. The host of a dinner party has done nothing to show they don’t value their privacy Harry would lose his right to privacy on the basis that he showed himself entirely careless of it. He got smashed and stripped off in front of a small crowd including almost total  strangers – with camera phones. That would usually be described as exhibitionism;  it’s certainly negligent. He cannot then reasonably turn around and protest he is particularly protective of his privacy. It’s the ability of equity to take into account the behaviour of those calling on it that would be useful.

    After all, why should the law step in to protect a very privileged, educated, rich man who can’t be bothered to take any steps to protect himself? He’s not a child. And in doing so, why should it silence those selling the story? Your only answer would seem to be that it is an abuse of hospitality, which equally applies to providing details of what happened, not just the pictures – and that’s where privacy laws take us: to a place where the rich  behave as they please and decide what us plebs should be allowed to hear and see.

    As for the pictures not helping explain the issues, as I more or less said before I can’t see any reason why the papers should be restricted to delivering only those aspects deemed useful to explaining the issues. The fact that millions of their readers will, having read the story, sought out the pictures online, rather shows its an intrinsic part of the story. Plenty of stories can be told without the pictures, but they nevertheless add to it.

    • Brumanuensis

      We’ll have to disagree about the importance of the pictures to the story.

      The point on privacy is that Prince Harry invited these people back to his hotel room. If he had done it in someone else’s hotel room or dwelling, I would be less sympathetic. However, he was exhibitionist in a very particular setting and there is nothing to indicate that he intended his behaviour to be publicised. And insofar as he did nothing illegal or inappropriate, I don’t see why it should be publicised. Even royals have a right to privacy.

      If Harry had set himself up as a paragon of modesty and clean-living, then there would indeed be a public interest case for publishing the photo, because it would illustrate that he was a complete hypocrite. But to humiliate a young man who was having fun and naively thought he could trust others to be discreet, is excessive. We should not reward people for abusing the – even misplaced – trust of others. That is something equity should favour.

      You do have a point on the reporting of the facts being a breach of trust. However, a photograph has an additional immediacy that renders it more intrusive, which is why I make the distinction. Ideally, neither would be reported.

  • Hugh

     https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=the+sun&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&meta=cr%3DcountryUK|countryGB#hl=en&cr=countryUK|countryGB&tbs=ctr:countryUK|countryGB&sclient=psy-ab&q=leveson+site:www.thesun.co.uk%2F&oq=leveson+site:www.thesun.co.uk%2F&gs_l=serp.3…42895.50256.1.50473.16.15.1.0.0.5.299.2446.3j7j5.15.0…0.0…1c.LHKk555HEJI&psj=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&fp=4d59194e7a14bae1&biw=1278&bih=709

    https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=the+sun&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&meta=cr%3DcountryUK|countryGB#hl=en&cr=countryUK|countryGB&tbs=ctr:countryUK|countryGB&sclient=psy-ab&q=%22rebekah+brooks%22+site:www.thesun.co.uk%2F&oq=%22rebekah+brooks%22+site:www.thesun.co.uk%2F&gs_l=serp.3…3421.5219.4.5439.2.2.0.0.0.0.137.198.1j1.2.0…0.0…1c.VPG6rcAkuck&psj=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&fp=4d59194e7a14bae1&biw=1278&bih=709

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