Royal reporters

[CurlewKate]

Just heard an interesting/depressing thing about the slimyness of old school royal reporting. Apparently, James Whittaker (well known to us older people) couldn’t get close access to Charles and Diana while they were on holiday so sat on a cliff watching them on a yacht through binoculars. After 8 hours without them exchanging a word, he drew the conclusion that their marriage was in trouble….and broke the story. Those were the days-they had to suffer for their stories!🤣

That is tacky and intrusive and should be illegal, but he wasn’t wrong either.

I’m no royalist but what a pathetic way to earn a living.

Why anyone believes anything from these so called reporters or sources, how many times does it need to shown they just make stuff up or take something and skew the perception of it ...Just gossipers out to make a living off others in a highly questionable way. Trying to destroy people..awful

I think famous people have better protection from intrusion nowadays.

This, x 100

How dreadful that a couple could go on holiday and be spied on like that.

Obviously that goes without saying.

So? I'm just expressing my opinion on this.

James Whitaker sounds like a good journalist to me. He worked hard to get the evidence to stand up his story and he was spot on. Isn’t that what journalists are supposed to do?

I get that @SpottyAardvark but I wish he’d used his talents to expose something useful. Dogged journalists are valuable and admirable, but spying on a couple with binoculars to ascertain how often they talk seems a bit odd to me. 🤷‍♀️

The telephoto lens has a lot to answer for. You’re just not safe anywhere. Catherine was photographed sunbathing topless at a private villa in France years ago by a distant photographer. Horrible for her but I suspect that wouldn’t be acceptable in the UK. I think there’s less regulation in Europe.

Eeuww..even when people are on holiday in a private location?

All kinds of things might be true but don’t ethics come into how you find them out?

He was an excellent journalist, I agree. Maybe the skill could have been directed to a better cause?

I agree. I was just fascinated that he managed to break a major story based entirely on a negative.

Hundreds of women every day are being stalked and terrified by obsessive lunatics, I would think that is far more frightening and intrusive than being watched through binoculars. Part of celebrity and public life is being watched.

Yes, they do. But in this case, Whitaker’s activities were entirely ethical because he exposed the fact that the public were being sold a lie. And they were being forced to pay for that lie with their taxes.

Charles & Diana’s ‘fairytale romance’ was a lie. Their showpiece wedding was a lie. Their perfect family life was a lie. And journalists like Whitaker exposed those lies, and showed the public that they were being taken for mugs.

No wonder Diana was able to be tricked and lied to by Martin Bashir (amongst others) and felt she had no where to turn

But don’t you think that was already becoming clear from their public appearances? He could have made a good case from just the stuff I’ve seen of their public appearances! You don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes.

I don’t accept that his methods were justified, whoever they were - marriage problems are hellish and a bit of humanity ought to enter in to it. I think everyone has a right to some privacy, whatever they’re going through, and Charles and Diana’s marriage problems were their business really until they wanted to go public.

I would agree with this. You have to respect people's privacy, you can't be a moral arbiter with binoculars and a long lens.

I wish I could remember the book now but I read a book about Diana by two journalists who had followed her on the royal circuit from engagement to the end of her life. They believed that the "he never loved me, he was always in love with Camilla" story was the sort of re-writing history that people do when their marriage is breaking up (eg men leaving their wives and saying stuff like 'I never loved you, you forced me to get married' when that really was not the case). They said that Charles and Diana were crazy about each other in the early days and it was very obvious to anyone who saw them, particularly IIRC on their Australian tour. They said that in their view the marriage failed because ultimately Charles and Diana were not well suited but so do loads of marriages - there was nothing particularly unusual about their marriage and its failure (as Diana claimed) it was just a case of fall in love, get married, have children, fall out of love.

The point I am trying to make is that Charles and Diana were not "selling us a lie," they were trying to cope with a marriage which was failing and would both have been very sad and stressed and unsure what to do. Someone watching them for 8 hours is dreadful. I appreciate that he was probably just trying to get confirmation of what he had picked up with his own eyes on the circuit, maybe his editor said they wouldn't print the story without proof, but still - nosy, sleazy bastard.

@BalloonSlayer excellent points

I think royal reporters are quite revolting. They spy, they make up stories, they make their living off of being voyeurs.
I just need to add.. Nicholas Witchell... even the royals themselves couldn't stand him. So obsequious.

@BalloonSlayer

Great post.

Oh, for some nuance on here! And a bit of humanity.

Your’re right that we tend to forget we all have hindsight. We know how the story played out. But I’m sure the protagonists, stuck in the middle of an agonising situation, were trying to work through it and the glee of some posters who justify unlimited press intrusion is a bit disturbing.

Personally, when I sniff marital discord I want to look away, not turn the microscope on people!

Do people think that journalists should always avert their eyes from signs of relationship problems? I’m torn about C&D-we were definitely being sold a fairy story by the Palace when that was far from reality and their marriage was public as well as private. Do we have a right to know when we are being sold a myth? What about someone like Boris Johnson? In the days of James Whittaker he wouldn’t have got away with his affairs and unknown number of children. And for those of us old enough to remember, it was gutter journalism that revealed Cecil Parkinson’s appalling treatment of his daughter.

At the end of the day these people only have jobs because people are interested I their crap. Look at the obsession with H&M. And look Diana died 20+ years ago, and there is still interest on this thread!