Rupert Murdoch took to Twitter to express his sympathy for Prince Harry in the wake of the naked pictures controversy, urging all to give the royal “a break.” [The Hollywood Reporter]
WHAT HAPPENS in Las Vegas if you’re a member of the royal family definitely does not stay in Las Vegas. After TMZ splashed the photos across the web the story predictably went viral. After all, it’s not every day you get a glimpse of a member of the royal family naked. That Murdoch’s own paper published the photos, with rumors flying the patriarch gave the order, makes this latest report of his tweet even more interesting.
Last week a grainy video of Harry and Ryan Lochte surfaced from a AP raw video YouTube clip, which was quickly snatched up by New York magazine. They were doing a weird swim race in a packed pool.
But just as big as Prince Harry being Harry was the news that Rupert Murdoch defied the royals to publish the pics.
In its TV news bulletins, the BBC showed the Sun’s front page with the photo blacked out, as did Sky TV’s website, while the Times website pixillated Harry’s picture.
Harry’s office had contacted the Press Complaints Commission, the industry’s self-regulatory body, to advise that printing the grainy pictures would intrude on the prince’s privacy, in breach of the editors’ code of practice.
Commentators said British newspapers, their reputations severely damaged by a phone-hacking scandal centred on Murdoch’s News of the World tabloid and by a subsequent judicial inquiry into press ethics, had been too scared to ignore that view.
This is as much about Rupert Murdoch clawing his way back to some sort of relevancy as it is about why the royal family deserves special treatment if they’re going to get caught with their pants down.
“This is about the ludicrous situation where a picture can be seen by hundreds of millions of people around the world on the Internet but can’t be seen in the nation’s favourite paper,” said David Dinsmore, managing editor of the Sun. – Murdoch’s Sun defies royals, prints naked Harry pics
If my memory serves me correctly, Princess Margaret was also caught on camera in a very unflattering light as was Princess Di. I have no clue why this is news since I remember in my younger days when I went skinny dipping, my children went skinny dipping when they were young and recently a couple of my grandchildren did it. And guess what – the young will always skinny dip. There’s something liberating about it.