Fact: A car crashed in the Alma Tunnel of Paris on August 31st, 1997, in the wee hours of the morning.
Fact: The driver of the car was speeding and had high levels of alcohol in his system.
Fact: The occupants of the car— Henri Paul, Dodi Fayed and Diana Spencer, formerly The Princess Of Wales— died, with the first two proclaimed dead on the scene while the latter declared dead four hours post the accident.
To the naked eye, this was a clear-cut, simple case of negligent driving. So this begs the question, why did the London Metropolitan Police conduct a four-year long investigation, investing hundreds of millions of dollars, in producing an 871 page report titled “Operation Paget” that dug into 175 conspiracy theories of the accident?
Princess Diana’s death sparked raw grief and outrage among the British people: their anger at the royal family and their fury at the media, especially the paparazzi, whom they blamed for the car crash. Diana was the most famous woman in the world — beloved, betrayed, pitied and pursued. Unlike the rest of the British royals, she innately understood the power of the media. Of course, this comes from the fact that she had been followed by the media ever since they realized that the shy kindergarten teacher was dating the heir to the throne. Early in Ed Perkins’ tempestuous documentary The Princess, a meticulously selected audio clip of one media figure acknowledges that no other future queen consort has endured the type of attention to which the late Princess Diana was subject.
On one hand, the tabloids were extravagant in their praise, breathlessly following her every move. She upstaged the other royals by charm or by calculation. Examples of the Princess’s use of the media are far and wide. During her divorce from HRH King Charles, she secretly cooperated with author Andrew Morton for the sensational biography “Diana: Her True Story.” Her 1995 BBC interview, in which she spoke of depression, bulimia and infidelity, blew up charts across the world. It is popularly alleged that she would read the Sun, the Daily Mirror, the Daily Mail and the Express, each morning over breakfast. Only when she had digested this light first course would she tackle the weightier and often far less apprising reviews of her activities in the broadsheets. Not only this, but she was also on first-name terms with many of the tabloid editors, and at one time or another had invited all of them to Kensington Palace. “Of all the people who hungrily read every word written about her, Diana was the hungriest,” wrote John Lanchester in the New Yorker. “She pored over photos of herself, and loved the publicity that, by the end, had her entirely trapped.”
On the other, she was a victim of unending media scrutiny. In hearing accounts of how tabloids tortured her, from interviews with “expert sources” or “insiders” offering conjecture on the private lives of royals to the ever-present paparazzi lying in wait, the Princess was wildly exploited by the coverage of media. And this is what, in the end, as is believed by millions including Diana’s family, led to her untimely death.
On the morning of Aug. 30, 1997, Diana called the Daily Mail’s Richard Kay, her favourite royal correspondent. She said she might withdraw from public life, but she still wanted to be a humanitarian. Maybe she was getting married. Maybe not. That night, the paparazzi camped outside the Ritz Paris hotel as Diana and Dodi, the Princess’s then-boyfriend, ate a late dinner. Slipping out the rear entrance, they hopped into the back seat of a car driven by Henri Paul, the hotel’s deputy head of security. This is where the certainty of events end, and the horrendous
torture of the media begins.
A few of the paparazzi jumped on motorcycles and pursued the Mercedes-Benz, which raced into the Pont D’Alma tunnel, clipped the back of a white Fiat Uno and slammed into a pylon at about 100 mph. It is believed that these paparazzi forced the car to speed up, and the driver to become disoriented by the constant flashes. The first photographer arrived within a minute of the crash. A doctor who happened on the scene later testified that the paparazzi took pictures (which were never published) but did not interfere with emergency personnel. Seven photographers were detained; they thought it was to give witness statements, but they were held for three days and charged with manslaughter.
Within minutes of the breaking news, cable channels speculated that the paparazzi had caused the crash. On CNN, Tom Cruise blasted the media: “It is harassment,” he proclaimed angrily. A few hours later, Diana’s brother, Earl Spencer, read a scathing prepared statement: “I would say that I always believed the press would kill her in the end. But not even I could imagine that they would
take such a direct hand in her death, as seems to be the case. It would appear that every proprietor and editor of every publication that has paid for intrusive and exploitative photographs of her, encouraging greedy and ruthless individuals to risk everything in pursuit of Diana’s image, has blood on his hands today.”
So, the question of the truth remains: was it the media that led to Princess Diana’s downfall? Or was it just another unfortunate accident, coincidentally involving the tabloid’s most favourite woman? Masses continue to question the fatal twilight of that August of 1997 for the past two decades and will continue to do so for decades to come. Because in the end, it is impossible to understand the truth behind what happened that night. Maybe it was a conspiracy of the tabloids, maybe it was her obsession with them that led to this. Regardless, The People’s
Princess remains frozen in time: beautiful, dazzling, beloved — the kind of mythological perfection conferred by an early, tragic death.
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