by Les Hinton
Once-great companies crumbled as they struggled to learn profitable new tricks. Rich, multimedia parent corporations ran out of patience. Time Warner, Tribune Media Company, and News Corp-Fox reviewed the growing wreckage and washed their hands of properties that once gushed profits but were now becoming liabilities. They followed the unsentimental laws of commerce, exorcising a decimated industry that investors feared was approaching the end of its days. Rupert could not bring himself to put his beloved print properties up for adoption and leave their fate with unknown investors; he satisfied shareholders, and Fox executives, by separating News Corp and Fox, and maintaining the same family shareholding of both.
These castaways with their life-threatening wounds were left to navigate away from their disintegrating foundations, to reinvent themselves or perish. Time Inc, with limited resources, splashed out to buy internet enterprises such as MySpace, then, in a search for safety, made a deal to sell itself to another big magazine publisher, Meredith. Tribune, like a grandmother at a rave, renamed itself tronc, inc — for Tribune online content. News Corp — Rupert’s publishing operations kept the name when they were divorced from Fox — invested in real estate websites, radio, and arcane online advertising technology.
At the turn of the millennium, we were sufficiently optimistic about print to persuade Rupert’s board to approve a £650 million spend on three new printing plants. It might have been the last big pressroom construction project in the western world.
In 2006, when these great press halls were nearly complete, Rupert flew with a group of us to Japan as part of a continuing study of what many newspaper people were still calling ‘new media’, as if it were nascent and unthreatening.
‘We’ve got an extra passenger,’ said Rupert. ‘We’re bringing along the man who owns Blueberry.’
‘BlackBerry, Rupert,’ I said.
The world was spinning faster than we knew. Within 10 years, the pioneering BlackBerry smartphone, once every sophisticate’s mobile choice, was itself outclassed and outdated.
CHAPTER 23
Damsel in distress
‘There’s a lady on the phone wants to speak to you. Says she’s Princess Diana.’
I had been in London a few weeks when my assistant Marianne Krafinski, a tough and worldly native of Queens in New York City, called from her desk. She was used to crackpot calls, but handled them with care since telling a croaky-voiced man to ‘Piss off’ when he claimed to be Rupert Murdoch.
‘No, no — it’s Murdoch here,’ said Rupert, who didn’t sound himself, having just come round in hospital after a general anaesthetic.
The anxious, whispery voice on the phone was unmistakably Diana. She said she hoped I was enjoying my new job, but quickly came to the point. Photographers were making her life unbearable, and she didn’t know what to do.
‘They follow me everywhere, every day. I can never escape. They hide in bushes and behind trees. I can never go anywhere without them following me. Can you help me, Mr Hinton? I’m a damsel in distress.’
I offered sympathy, but no practical help. I told her these photographers were paparazzi, that they didn’t work for newspapers, and were beyond our control. I told her that Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis had been the target of obsessive media attention for 30 years, and that she was the new Jackie: every publication and television network in the world wanted her image.
‘I understand that, but it doesn’t help me,’ she said. Diana wanted to meet for lunch to talk more, but I declined her invitation. I knew that Diana was sophisticated in dealing with the media, that she lunched with editors, leaked to trusted reporters, gave aid to sympathetic authors, flirted with photographers one moment and raged at them the next. She had regularly outwitted Royal Family spin doctors, sworn enemies since her separation from Prince Charles three years before.
But mass media had in some ways lost control of itself. Technology had spawned an uncountable army of wannabe photojournalists. Rich newspapers and magazines were ready to pay a lot of money for compelling images, wherever they came from. These newspapers could profit from the work of the paparazzi without being responsible for their behaviour. It was an unhealthy mix, and this was before the advent of the internet and online news.
Once, taking a photograph, developing a print, and wiring it to potential customers, was complex and expensive. Now it was simple: buy a camera and a laptop and you’re ready to distribute photographs anywhere in the world in minutes. Anyone could join the paparazzi, and a relentless horde followed Diana because they could earn thousands — tens of thousands — for the right photo.
Diana tried thwarting them. Arriving at the gym, she walked with her face to the wall and her back towards the photographers. She wore the same clothes day after day in an effort to date and devalue the images. She pleaded in tears to be left alone. Nothing made them give up the chase.
At lunch in Park Lane, London, with Peter Stothard, when he was editor of The Times, she said: ‘When we leave they will be hiding everywhere.’ She was right. Cameras emerged from behind trees, walls, and parked cars as she appeared.
Publications worldwide created the market, but none paid better than Fleet Street. Diana photos had become the paparazzi’s daily cash crop.
I last saw her at The Sunday Times Christmas party in 1996, dressed in red, chatting and charming, and relaxed, ironically, because at a Fleet Street party she was truly safe from tormenting cameras.
The following summer on Sunday 31 August, my bedside telephone woke me soon after 1am. Phil Hall, the editor of the News of the World, said Diana had been in a car accident in Paris. Her companion, Dodi Fayed, was dead, and Diana was in hospital. I drove to Wapping.
It is a paradox how calm newsrooms can become when something momentous happens. Murder and disaster are daily events, but when no expression of alarm, anger, fear, or grief can do justice to what has happened, a tense and almost speechless calm occurs. This was how it was that night in the News of the World and The Sunday Times.
Phil Hall came towards me as I entered his newsroom. His walk was unhurried and his face looked as it usually did, clench-jawed and unexpressive.
‘We’re hearing she’s dead,’ was all he said, and led me towards Stuart Kuttner, the veteran managing editor, who was leaning against a cabinet of newspaper files, looking at the ground with one hand against his face. He had been on the phone to an aide to Prince Charles.
‘I asked how she was,’ Kuttner said. ‘He told me it was as bad as I could imagine. It’s pretty clear she’s dead, but he wouldn’t say so.’
Photographs of the accident began arriving. One showed a flash-lit image of Diana in the back of a wrecked Mercedes. The car door was open and she looked upright and calm, without any evident injury. How could she be dead? Was our contact wrong? We knew we had to wait for an official confirmation before the presses could run.
Word arrived that paparazzi on motorbikes were chasing Diana’s car when it crashed, and police had arrested photographers at the scene. I remembered that call from Diana — ‘I’m a damsel in distress’ — and walked to my office to sit alone in the dark. Stuart Higgins, the editor of The Sun, called me. He was crying.
The News of the World editors had prepared a front page. The headline — ‘Diana Dies In Paris Crash’ — was wrapped around a photo of the wrecked car. I looked at it for a moment, then took a piece of paper and wrote: ‘Diana Dead’.
I handed it to Hall. ‘Everyone is asleep. A lot of people will find this out when they see the Sunday front pages, which is something that almost never happens any more. Let’s tell them the simple fact. Why not make that your entire front?’ He agreed.
When her death was announced, the presses did not stop until Sunday lunchtime, many hours later than usual. I had woken our production and circulation executives, alerting them to stock extra newsprint and to prepare for days of big print runs. The prospect of big sales
is often a cause for celebration, but not that night.
Rupert was in London and I called him with the news at 5.15am. There was no point waking him sooner, but I didn’t want him finding out from anyone but me.
In the aftermath, both the Royal Family and the tabloid press were cast as villains. When grief demonstrated by the Royal Family failed to match the public mood, Diana’s death created one of the biggest crises of the modern monarchy. Mourners had laid an immense carpet of flowers outside Kensington Palace, where Diana lived, but two miles away the flag above Buckingham Palace flew at full mast. The Queen stayed 500 miles away at Balmoral Castle, her summer retreat in Scotland.
Diana’s admirers had seen their princess banished by the Royal Family after her divorce from Prince Charles, now they believed her death was being treated with cold indifference. Wrenched into reality by public anger, the Queen returned to London to address the nation, pledging to ‘cherish her memory’, and the Union Flag at last flew at half-mast above the palace.
Diana’s brother Charles, Earl Spencer, accused the press of having blood on its hands. His funeral oration was angry: ‘A girl given the name of the ancient goddess of hunting was, in the end, the most hunted person of the modern age.’
It was quickly clear, however, that Diana’s paparazzi pursuers had not caused the crash. The driver, Henri Paul, a 41-year-old Frenchman, was drunk and travelling at twice the speed limit when his car plunged into the column of a tunnel near the Seine.
But it was still a terrible time for media. Although the pack of bike-riding photographers did not hound Diana to her death, she died as they sought yet again to cash in on the woman they treated as a commodity. And Fleet Street, while it did not bear guilt for her death, knew it had laid siege to her life.
With demands rising for laws to restrain the press, newspapers competed in a fever of self-exculpation to cleanse themselves of responsibility. The Daily Mail announced a ban on the purchase of paparazzi pictures. The News of the World was followed by the entire industry when they made freelance photographers sign agreements to abide by the industry code of conduct.
The chief watchdogs of self-regulation went into action. Lord John Wakeham, chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, toured Fleet Street editors, pressing for remorse and change. Sir David English, former editor of the Daily Mail, was chairman of the Editors’ Code of Practice Committee, which wrote the self-imposed rules of conduct for newspapers. His statement acknowledged a problem while skirting smoothly over anything sounding confessional: ‘The tragic death of Diana, Princess of Wales, has focused unprecedented public attention on press intrusion, harassment, and respect for privacy.’
Wakeham and English swiftly put in place new industry guidelines to guard against the relentless pursuits that Diana had suffered. Promises were made to protect Diana’s schoolboy sons, William and Harry. Photographers stayed away when William and Harry attended Eton, and a press blackout was agreed when the Army deployed Harry to Afghanistan.
But still the paparazzi plague endured. In January 2007, there was a rush of speculation that Prince William would propose to Catherine Middleton on her twenty-fifth birthday. The result was a Diana-scale paparazzi hunt; television was full of images of Middleton fleeing the mob that laid siege to her Chelsea flat. It was an alarming echo of 1997. I spoke to the editors and announced publicly that we would refuse to buy any paparazzi photographs. I knew our rivals would follow us — we were the country’s biggest newspaper group and they didn’t have a choice. The siege ended instantly. Next morning outside Kate’s home there was only a lone and disappointed ITN camera crew — there to film the pap marauders.
In 2015, Diana’s grandchildren, George and Charlotte, became new victims. Fleet Street had stopped buying paparazzi photos of the royals, but foreign media were unquenchable and the digital age meant demand had increased incalculably. Prince William, now 33, and his wife, Catherine, accused photographers of hiding in car boots, and using other children to lure their toddler son within range of their cameras. The pursuit fell back when Kensington Palace warned the paparazzi they risked being mistaken for terrorists and shot.
The relationship between monarchy and media — even the best-behaved media — is born of mutual need. The Royal Family understands the importance of marketing and public relations. The mission statement for their enterprise is potent — ‘Duty’ — and its intended return on investment an eternal franchise with incomparable working conditions.
Although every Briton is a financial subscriber to this venture and can never opt out, the people still have the power to destroy it. Far more than revenue, the important currency for this operation is public approval.
The monarchy was a peculiar institution to me when I returned from America. It defied any rational explanation, served no evident practical purpose, and yet was indispensable in the minds of most of the country. Pressed to explain what they loved about it, and why it mattered in a mature democracy, people would grow irritated, as if they had been challenged about an embarrassing personal habit they could not understand or control. The monarchy seemed just that — an emotional habit offering some deep comfort for which no justifying logic was required. The monarchy casts a spell over Britain.
But this spell must be kept in working shape. Public approval needs constant nourishment, and customers need value for money; but the monarchy is an enterprise that can’t afford to look too anxious to please. Dignity and restraint are central to the equity of the brand; there must be no vulgar exploitation. Exposure in print and on screen is essential, but advertising is obviously not an option. The Royal Family is forced to work with the unruly British media because it is an unavoidable route to market, the conduit to its all-powerful customer base.
This uneasy collusion between the royals and the media was never in its history more important to the Royal Family than after Diana’s death. There had been rocky years since the breakup of his marriage, but now Charles’ popularity was lower than ever; one poll rated it at 20 per cent. Even the Queen was under pressure.
With Charles, there was good reason. In a 1995 television interview, Diana famously said: ‘Well, there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.’ The country knew what she meant. The publication of a racy mobile phone conversation between Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles, recorded in 1989, had caused a sensation.
Charles wanted to marry Camilla, but Diana’s death, five years after her separation from Charles, had blown a crater in the road to Camilla’s rehabilitation. In the autumn of 1997, it was impossible to imagine the country would ever accept her as their new princess and future queen.
My car arrived at the blue-canopied entrance of The Ritz Hotel in Arlington Street just off London’s Piccadilly. It was the spring of 1998, the National Osteoporosis Society was having a charity dinner, and the hostess had invited me.
‘Hello, I’m Camilla,’ she told me, unnecessarily. ‘You’ll be sitting next to me.’
Camilla Parker Bowles’ face opened into a big smile of bright teeth and pink gums. Two fan-shaped patterns of lines appeared above each cheekbone. Her blue eyes were small and sharp, and given added dimension by circles of thin black liner. Her hair was upper-class Farrah Fawcett, two golden wings sweeping away from her cheeks. Her handshake was country-girl strong.
We were at a private fundraiser for 40 or so people. Camilla sat me to her left at a table for eight. On her right was the trim and meticulous Italian fashion designer, Valentino. His face was tanned, waxen, and as still as a celebrity mask in a souvenir shop window.
‘I’m terrified,’ Camilla said, leaning close to me. ‘I have never in my life had to make a speech until now.’ Beneath the table she showed me her notes, neatly folded, sitting at the top of her open handbag.
Across the table was the author William Shawcross, an acquaintance since he published a biography of Rupert in 1992. He and Camilla had grown up toget
her in Sussex. ‘I had such a crush on him when we were young,’ she whispered. ‘He’s so good-looking.’
Camilla’s speech lasted only three minutes and was an obvious ordeal. It was oddly moving seeing her struggle to contain her nerves, the speech notes shaking in her hand. She was driven by strong and invisible feelings; in that leaked mobile phone conversation, she had told Charles: ‘I’d suffer anything for you. That’s love. It’s the strength of love.’
This love had made her Britain’s most hated woman. It was too dangerous for her even to be seen with Charles. In the popular imagination, Camilla was a scarlet woman, the marriage wrecker who had broken the heart of a fragile princess. Newspapers sometimes reflect public opinion and other times inflame it, but there was no doubt that the public loathing of Camilla had become a real and threatening thing.
But Charles’ determination to marry Camilla was non-negotiable. It led to one of the most extraordinary feats of public relations in royal history.
Charles and his aides were convinced the British people could grow to accept Camilla. The first step was persuading the media, and I was an early victim of their efforts. It worked on me — she had an open and uncomplicated charm — but the redemption of Camilla still looked to me like a dangerous high-wire act as I left that night, with a long way to fall for the two principals.
My Ritz invitation had not been made casually. The court of Prince Charles got to know me first, to make sure I was ‘safe’. The 31-year-old son of a Middlesbrough bricklayer was an unlikely emissary, but Mark Bolland had the smooth bearing and flourish of an old-fashioned courtier. He was a reincarnated Georgian attendant without the powdered wig.
Bolland was Charles’ deputy private secretary, and his mission was to persuade the media that his boss and Camilla were a lovable and loving couple. The Daily Telegraph may have overstated his importance in calling him ‘the real power behind the future King of England’, but it had the right idea.