Conspiracies and kill notices: how Kate’s edited
photo whirled the rumour mill
With Princess
of Wales out of sight for health reasons, impact of altered family photo has
been magnified
Esther Addley
Fri 15 Mar 2024 15.13 CET
On Tuesday, as the crisis in Gaza continued, turmoil built in Haiti and
Joe Biden and Donald Trump were confirmed as their parties’ presidential
candidates, the White House press secretary was asked a question by a
journalist that caused her, briefly, to laugh.
“Does the White House ever digitally alter
photos of the president?”, Karine Jean-Pierre was asked by a reporter.
“Why would we digitally alter photos? Are you
comparing us to what is going on in the UK?” she replied. “No – that is not
something that we do here.”
When Kensington Palace released an apparently
candid photograph last weekend of the Princess of Wales and her children, timed
to coincide with Mother’s Day, it no doubt expected the usual warm reception,
perhaps with a few approving front pages.
One week on, it is fair to say things have not
gone to plan. After multiple clumsy edits to the photo were identified, five
leading photo agencies issued an almost unprecedented “kill notice” of the
“manipulated” image.
Since then, not only the White House press
corps but large sections of the world’s media have been fascinated by the
photograph – and what it may say about the princess, who has been recovering
from surgery – putting the royals at the centre of a dangerous crisis of
credibility.
If you’re caught being untruthful once, after
all, why should anyone ever believe you? In Spain, some outlets have repeated
claims, rubbished by the palace last month, that the princess is in a coma. On
US talkshows, longstanding if highly libellous rumours about the royal
marriage, similarly denied, are being openly aired and mocked.
And on social media, needless to say, the
unfounded conspiracies are wilder still. Kate has had a facelift, or she is in
hiding, or has been replaced by a body double. Most are easy to dismiss, but
when even the ITV royal editor, Chris Ship, one of the select handful of “royal
rota” journalists who are briefed by the palace, posts a tweet that begins:
“I’ve never been much of a conspiracy theorist but …”, the Firm undeniably has
a problem.
Who would be a royal? According to the palace,
lest we forget, the 42-year-old mother of three has undergone major abdominal
surgery and is not well enough to appear publicly. When the operation was first
revealed on 17 January, Kensington Palace said she was not expected to make any
appearances until at least Easter. That, they insist, has not changed. So why
the frenzied conspiracies?
Perhaps because Catherine remains media
catnip, and is incredibly important to the royal public image; three months
without her was always going to be a challenge. Things would arguably have been
more manageable were it not for the unhappy coincidence of King Charles’s
announcements of his prostate treatment and cancer .
While Catherine had requested privacy over her
diagnosis, the king and his Buckingham Palace press team opted to be more open,
though the type of cancer has not been revealed. Most were happy to accept this
as the princess’s right, yet the fact the king has remained somewhat visible,
even while undergoing cancer treatment, made the absolute silence from
Catherine all the more evident.
What tipped online mutterings into febrile
speculation was when the Prince of Wales pulled out of the funeral of his
godfather on 27 February, citing only a “personal matter”. The Mother’s Day
photo was evidently an attempt to settle the mood; instead, its inept handling
turned an uncomfortable drama into a full-blown crisis. Even a brief apology,
signed in Catherine’s name, did not help. Either palace advisers had not
grasped the gravity of their mistake, or – just possibly – the royal couple, so
protective of their children’s privacy, were resisting their guidance.
Can they recover from it? Only if they change
tack, says Emma Streets, an associate director at the communications agency
Tigerbond who specialises in crisis PR. There remains a lot of empathy towards
the princess, she says, adding: “I think [the episode] proves that she’s only
human. But it’s crucial that the palace do not repeat a [mistake] on this
scale.”
They will have to provide some form of update
on the princess’s health by Easter, says Streets, whether or not Catherine is
well enough to resume normal public appearances. “I think they really need to
maintain that timeline to avoid any further controversy. So the pressure is on
for the comms team to handle that without putting a foot wrong, and really,
meticulously, plan.”
Streets says the royal family’s long-practised
strategy of “never complain, never explain” is outdated. “That doesn’t work
today, given the speed that this story will spread online, and I think that
massively needs addressing from a strategic point of view.”
That view is echoed by Lynn Carratt, the head
of talent at digital specialists Press Box PR, who says she has been “racking
my brains” trying to understand why Kensing Palace did not simply release the
undoctored image. “They could have put this to bed straight away,” she says.
“There needs to be an overhaul of their comms
strategy and a bit of honesty and trust with the press. I kind of understand
why there isn’t – but they need a whole new approach to PR, to bring it into
the modern world of the media.
“We’re not just talking about print press and
broadcast, when it’s now social media and the digital space where people are
consuming the news. It’s very different, and you need to do PR differently for
that space.”
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