British Press avoid nude Harry photos

LONDON, Thursday
As naked photos of Britain’s Prince Harry flooded the Internet, royal officials could only watch in horror — but at least they could stop the usually raucous British press from publishing them.

Thursday’s newspapers did not run the grainy snaps showing the third in line to the throne cavorting naked with friends in a Las Vegas hotel suite, after royal officials contacted the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) media watchdog.

Industry figures have put the media’s unusual display of obedience down to the fallout from last year’s phone-hacking scandal at Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World, which sparked the judge-led Leveson Inquiry into press ethics.

The probe has left Britain’s previously cavalier newspapers wary of taking risks for fear of provoking a much tougher set of rules governing the media than the current system of self-regulation, they say.

With typical chutzpah, The Sun, Britain’s biggest-selling newspaper which is also owned by Murdoch, got around the problem by mocking up its own version of one of the nude shots, posed by a journalist and a female intern.

“Harry grabs the crown jewels,” ran their front page headline, next to the image of picture editor Harry Miller cupping his genitalia.

Gary Horne, Journalism Course Director at London College of Communication, told AFP: “Before the Leveson Inquiry, the pictures would have been all over the tabloids.

“But most of the tabloid papers now are effectively running scared about upsetting anybody that’s in power in the celebrity world, or the royal family.”

Neil Wallis, the News of the World’s former executive editor, said he would have printed the pictures before the Leveson Inquiry.

“The situation is fun — it’s a good, classic newspaper situation,” said Wallis.

“The problem is, in this post-Leveson era where newspapers are simply terrified of their own shadow, they daren’t do things that most of the country, if they saw it in the newspaper, would think ‘that’s a bit of a laugh’.” (AFP)