Prince Harry naked pictures highlight dangers of internet, says Mandelson. Prince Harry nude photos: press ethics and invasion of privacy. By Simon Hetherington It is tempting to throw up one’s hands in exasperation.
Risqué pictures of a celebrity appear in The Sun. What’s new? So the pictures apparently involve a member of the royal family – so the star quality of the celebrity is higher, but still, what’s new? We could quite easily add this to a fairly thick file entitled “Here we go again” or “Someone’s been a bit foolish and The Sun is up to its usual tricks”, and move on. We have all been under the impression that we are at the start of the great new era – the Leveson Era – in which we are finally going to curb the excesses of the media in invading privacy. It may be true that if most of the world can see these photos it may be pointless to prohibit them in the UK, but you wouldn’t think that should be part of a public interest argument. Prince Harry’s bum; to print or not to print? an alternative view – Brian Pillans. Well, against a cacophonous backdrop of hysterical commentary, The Sun has bitten the bullet and published on today’s front page those notorious photos of Prince Harry on the Vegas Strip.
The Sun says that they have published in the public interest and as a test of Britain’s free press. Many commentators and rivals have condemned the move as cynically putting up two fingers to both the law and the PCC Editors’ Code while others have lauded The Sun’s guts in challenging the hubris of the establishment when anyone with access to the internet can see exactly what they are not supposed to. However, very little of this commentary actually goes back to basics and examines the ethical and legal position here. Clause 3 of the PCC Code repeats the familiar words that everyone is entitled to respect for his or her private life and requires editors to justify intrusions into an individual’s private life without consent. The Code does not ban intrusion – it requires intrusion to be justified. Prince Harry’s Photos – Five Lessons for the Media Regulation Debate. As the froth dissipates it is worth reflecting on what lessons the saga of the Prince Harry photographs has for the media regulation debate.
There is a natural tendency to conclude that this is another passing “silly season” story – with as much wider significance as the Essex lion. After all Prince Harry holds no public office and the invasions of his privacy were relatively minor in the scheme of things. Such a conclusion would be too hasty. Prince Harry’s photos, squatting and defining rape – The Human Rights Roundup. Welcome back to the UK Human Rights Roundup, your weekly dose of human rights news.
The full list of links can be found here. You can also find our table of human rights cases here and previous roundups here. Prince Harry Gives Facebook The Royal Boot. Press grudgingly heeds Harry naked pics warning. UK newspapers today grudgingly heeded legal warnings from from lawyers acting for the Royal Family and resisted publishing the naked photos of Prince Harry which were circulating widely online yesterday.
But some titles were clearly unhappy about the situation. The Daily Mail described the picture ban as farcical and the Daily Mirror said: "Censoring them [the pictures] in Britain is ludicrous when everyon else is peering at an unclothed Prince. And it won't save Harry's blushes. " In a leader column the Mirror said that the emergence of the pictures - taken when Harry was playing strip pool in a private VIP suite with some friends - raised questions about his judgement and about Royal security. Britain's best-selling tabloid, The Sun, today had a more light-hearted take on the photos and it persuaded features picture editor Harry Miller, 31, and intern Sophie Henderson, 21, to strip in order to create the photos for pages 1,4 and 5. The UK civil law is similarly clear. Prince Harry photos: Clarence House contacts Press Complaints Commission. The royal family moved to block the British publication of grainy mobile phone pictures of Prince Harry naked in a Las Vegas hotel room after the images were widely circulated online.
A Clarence House spokesman confirmed that it had contacted the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) about the images, which were first published by the US-based celebrity website TMZ.