My SIL skated on the knife edge of HG with the first half of her first pregnancy (she was never dehydrated) and shortly after my niece (yes, the same one who’s headed back to Indonesia this summer) was born, her gallbladder went kablooey, which also runs very strongly in her family - the men too. It was removed, and when she was pregnant with my younger niece, it was one of those things where they didn’t tell anyone for a month, and while she didn’t escape morning sickness, it was MUCH milder that time around. My dad was the first person to suggest that having her gallbladder removed probably helped a lot, and we all agree.
That’s a perpetual component of the British royal rumor mills.
Keep in mind that Diana wasn’t 100% faithful either, but TBH, who could have blamed her?
I think this is the money quote from that piece,
The columnist Celia Walden had previously insisted that as a member of the royal family (which she referred to as “that corporation”), Meghan had no right to privacy. When the manipulation of the photograph was uncovered, Walden leaped to protect Catherine’s privacy. “The shameful speculation about the Princess of Wales’s health,” she wrote, “has to stop.”
I thought I used the gift link?
Oh, you probably did. It asked me to login when I followed your link, and I didn’t even look to see if it gave me an option to read without logging in. It might just always ask me since it knows I have an account.
Besides, what’s better than one gift? Two!
Looking at the actual URLs, you didn’t share the gift link.
Um, yes? Your own wording says it’s a guess. “They may have been used.” Or they may not have been used I guess. Glad that’s cleared up. Or was the quote of a nutter as you call him supposed to be proof? Look all I asked for was your cite that a judge made them edit the story. All you had to say was you didn’t have proof but it was your (assumption, guess, belief whatever) and that would be that. I’m not sure why you are getting so defensive. When you state something as if it was fact without showing proof expect questions.
No there is absolutely no guessing. It is a documented fact. They have been used to restrict press freedom.
It is as much “guessing” as guessing there is a royal family or a house of lords. Yeah I guess the royal family exist, but who can be sure?
Well shame on me!
The question was if it was used in this case. The instance you posted. The question was asked what proof there was to show that’s what happened in this case. It’s ok for you to guess that it was.
No the statement (by you) was this…
And yeah not being able to do that is an attack on the press
I don’t think Kensington Palace is in possession of the originals. I tend to believe that this picture really was something cooked up between William and Catherine on their own initiative and that the press office was so flatfooted in the aftermath because they had no information to work off of. That is, this fish rotted from the head down.
As @needscoffee points out above, Catherine never actually said that she was the one who edited the photo.
At this point it doesn’t matter what she says, the palace says or the tabloids say.
No one is gonna believe anything til she’s out and about and doing her job again.
Then we’ll get another rumor to have to hear about.
CNN spent way too much time on this. Talking to a “royal” insider by satellite and doing lots of yammering. Truth, it was about 10 minutes. But, still.
I agree it would be smart. But it would also be censorship, because they did it to avoid legal punishment. We had a thread about this recently, when it was about the Hugo Awards and how they self-censored to avoid the Chinese government going after them.
If they did it because of their own policy, and not due to any belief that they could get in trouble, then I would agree it is merely an editorial decision.
I make no judgement on what happened on this, because it would get into discussion about British libel laws vs. US ones, and that seems a bit too far off topic.
I mean, yes and no.
Injunctions have absolutely been used by powerful interests to avoid legitimate scrutiny, and that is an attack on the press and on the public.
They are also used legitimately to balance individuals right to privacy against intrusive and unwarranted press attention.
Everyone has a right to privacy, even people who are in the public eye due to their work or position, or even because they have sought out public attention. And so to do people who are married to, or children of, people in the public eye. Being at teh centre of a “media storm” is an exceptionally disruptive and intrusive experience, and one which absolutely infringes on a person’s right to privacy.
Sometimes, this infringement can be justified because of public interest and the nature of the individual’s public role. Sometimes it cannot - “Footballer has affair with younger model” is a story lots of people are interested in, but I don’t particularly see the justification for intruding on the private life of their children and partner just so people can be entertained by salacious details in their lunch break.
But of course this is about competing rights. And we have a system for weighing those up. Targets of such stories can bring actions in court to enforce their right to privacy, the press can advocate for their right to publish, and a judge can rule. But that of course does little good when it happens after the fact. Injunctions came about as a way not to prevent publication for all time, but to prevent teh story being published until it was ruled on either way. Honestly, that makes sense in a “when’s the best time to bolt a stable door” kind of way.
Again, none of this is to say that injunctions haven’t been used and abused to chill the press, just to point out that they have also been justifiably used to protect individual’s right to privacy.
In this case, it’s really striking that the edit you point out doesn’t protect William at all. The words “William is having an affair” appear in both the Before and After texts. What is missing from the After text is the name of the person with whom he is supposedly committing this infidelity.
As far as I can tell, the Marchioness of Cholmondeley is not a person of public interest. She doesn’t receive public money or hold public office. She does not hold herself up as a role model to be emulated. She is occasionally profiled by the kind of press that finds great interest in the homes and gardens of the aristocracy but the general public’s awareness of her is extremely low and she cannot really be labelled a public figure or someone who courts publicity. I think there’s a very good case to be made that when her right to privacy is weighed up against the right of the press to publicly identify her as the person who is rumoured to be having an affair with Prince William, her right to privacy should win out. As indeed should that of her husband, and any children she might have.
The salient detail here is that Prince William is allegedly cheating on his wife, as has been reported. Who in particular he is supposedly cheating on her with doesn’t particularly matter. The story would not be materially different if the alleged mistress were the Baroness of Featherstonehaugh, Lady Milngavie or Ms Jones.
Has a working or middle class person ever had an injunction issued to protect them, or do only the rich have a right to privacy?
Depends on whether they’ve been sufficiently in the public eye for the gossip press to take an interest in their private lives. Setting aside the “famous for being famous” who monetise the gossip they encourage themselves, there’s been the odd footballer who’s used injunctions this way - he may be rich but of working or middle class origins. Ordinary people may not be able to afford law suits, but are too ordinary to attract any media interest.
Though as they are only available people who are rich enough to hire very expensive lawyers to introduce an injunction in the highest courts in the land, it is by definition illegitimate. Even if you are claim you have a right to stop the publication of facts about your personal life (which I disagree with) only providing that right to very rich people is unacceptable. If this was a story about a family in a housing estate that got into a public brawl outside the local pub, every salacious detail would be included in the story without a second thought to their privacy (“And then Willy got his side piece Rosie up the duff, and Katie found out and was pissed, and went to confront him about it at The Windsor! LOL”), No one is getting them a super injunction, that “right” to privacy is only available for the super-rich.
Who in particular he is supposedly cheating on her with doesn’t particularly matter.
It really does, I mean the heir to the thrones reproductive organs are part of the system of government, its a bonkers throw back to feudal England, but thats the system (hell there is a whole section of the aristocracy that derives their power from being descended from a royal bastard). I don’t care, but its is a legitimate thing to report on.
just to point out that they have also been justifiably used to protect individual’s right to privacy.
That’s simply not the case. Even if you agree that its a valid use of state power to ensure personal details of a rich persons life are not reported, using state power to ensure the injunction itself cannot be reported on is a blatant abuse of power, and a massive restriction on free speech. The fact of that a rich individual’s lawyers were able to get an injunction against the press is an extremely relevant thing to report on.
ETA: Forget it, couldn’t get the link to work right.