October

Those self-imposed bans – they never work, do they? From Eye 1195:

“This newspaper was among the first to urge a tougher code of conduct for television and the Press,” announced a lofty Daily Mail, still laying a stake to the moral high-ground after the death of Princess Diana, on 27 September 1997. “On the initiative of our proprietor, Lord Rothermere, we were the first to ban pictures taken by paparazzi. And last week we warned: ‘If television and the Press cannot put their own house in order, state regulation will become inevitable.’ A broad welcome there must be then for the proposals put forward by Lord Wakeham, Chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, to tighten up self-regulation. The public mood demands more respect for privacy, protection for children and curbs on the harassment of individuals.”

So which was the paper which had to pull a shot of Prince William and Kate Middleton taken by paprazzo Alessandro Copetti, from its front page at the last minute last Saturday after Clarence House reminded it that the “aggressive pursuit… by photographers on motorcycles, in vehicles and on foot” which the couple had experienced breached that very tightening-up of the PCC code? The Daily Mail.

No such qualms at the Sun, which splashed the pictures – purchased via pap-agency Matrix – across a double-page spread on 6 October. This was, of course, the same paper whose publisher announced in January that it had “imposed a ban on all News International publications printing paparazzi photos of Kate Middleton.”