Maximum transparency is needed to restore trust in royals

Through whatever lens you view the recent royal dramas, one thing is certain: the Prince and Princess of Wales, if not the monarchy itself, have suffered reputational damage.

The US media are having a field day, mocking the couple for editing their Mother’s Day family snapshot last week and openly airing some of the wild online conspiracy theories that have dogged William and Kate since she withdrew from public life in January following abdominal surgery.

The American broadcaster CNN said it will now review all the Princess of Wales’s images in light of the fake photo incident.

Even the Dutch King, Willem-Alexander, has piled in, making a photoshopping joke as he chatted to schoolchildren on a tour this week.

Meanwhile, the news agencies that dramatically “killed” the photo provided by the Waleses, after it was allegedly edited by Kate, have compared our most popular royals to North Korea.

It’s all very well for staunch monarchists to jump to the pair’s defence, as journalist Charles Moore did, suggesting that professional photographers were miffed at amateur royal snappers taking work away from them and have exacted their revenge.

While gallant, that’s clearly an absurd notion. All the world’s main agencies, including Reuters, Agence France-Presse (AFP), Associated Press (AP), Getty and Shutterstock, agreed the hand-out, taken by William, was a lie.

As a rule, agencies do not run pictures that have been materially altered with image-editing software.

“They ban additions and deletions of subject matter, such as editing out a person…anything that hides an element of the subject is forbidden,” the Economist reported.

Such is the sophistication of technology that a picture can reveal much about its provenance, including the camera that captured it. The digital fingerprint of the Princess of Wales’s family photograph “indicates that a copy and paste function was used, most likely in the section featuring her face”, said the Telegraph.

This does not imply there was anything sinister about its composition, but the doctoring of the picture was serious enough to warrant its almost universal rejection.

Killing something on the basis of manipulation is rare, said AFP’s global news director Phil Chetwynd, and happens “once a year maybe, I hope less”. 

“The previous kills we’ve had have been from the North Korean news agency or the Iranian news agency,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Media Show.

“The big issue here is one of trust…it’s extremely important that a photo does represent broadly the reality that it’s seen in”.

AFP said it has reviewed its relationship with the Prince and Princess of Wales and so have we, if we’re honest.

This is sad. These are the most cherished members of the royal family, widely seen as relatable and as normal as they can be given their abnormal circumstances and privilege.

William, though still surly, is growing with his role and will hopefully have years as Prince of Wales to gain the experience needed to rule well.

Kate is beloved by much of the British public for her smiling dedication to upholding the institution she married into, and because she is a model of glam, but not completely inaccessible, motherhood.

The British press has wrapped a protective embrace around them both, to the extent that the “Lay off Kate” headlines don’t make sense.

With a few exceptions, our mainstream media are not attacking the Princess or the Prince, have accepted their version of photoshopping without challenge, and urged the prurient public (especially those addicted to social media) to move on.

This simply would not have happened a generation ago, when the tabloids saw it as their job to expose any trouble in the royal household.

The much-maligned “royal rat pack”, as they were known, believed, as did their editors, that the public had a right to know what the heir to the throne was up to, given the constitutional significance.

Their sleuthing focused on the sham marriage of Charles and Diana and later, of course, even the most outlandish stories turned out to be true.

Today, in leaving this investigative ground to the online community we are in dangerous territory because unlike the professional press, even back in the day, they are completely unaccountable.

Rumours don’t need to be sourced to gain currency and false narratives can take hold in the public consciousness in the absence of the full story.

This is unfortunate, particularly for Kate who is recovering from surgery and must be dismayed by the spread of salacious gossip when she hoped to protect her privacy.

David Yelland, who edited The Sun 20 years ago, said part of the problem is that the press is so in cahoots with the palace.

“Sometimes the UK media stands off the royal family…when they know things that they don’t report. We’re in a weird situation where there are things that are not being printed, but in a social media age I’m not sure that’s a sustainable situation.”

However much we might sympathise with the Waleses’ predicament, it is in their interests now to stop manipulating the press, as William’s father and mother did in the 80s and 90s. 

Returning to the pool system, in which one (professional) photographer is sanctioned to share pictures with the pack, would be a good place to start.

Even on her last legs and in obvious frailty, the Queen allowed herself to be photographed greeting her latest prime minister (on her last legs too, as it happened).

The AFP boss said rebuilding trust relied on “maximum transparency” and hopefully it’s not too late for the younger Windsors to grasp what the Queen instinctively understood: that there is a contract and they must keep their side of the bargain.

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