tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/kate-middleton-4418/articlesKate Middleton – The Conversation2024-03-25T05:53:04Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2264902024-03-25T05:53:04Z2024-03-25T05:53:04ZAnnouncing Kate Middleton’s cancer diagnosis should have been simple. But the palace let it get out of hand<p>The British royal family is famous for its carefully curated media image. That’s why it was a surprise to see them lose control of the narrative in the wake of what we now know is a serious health crisis befalling Catherine, Princess of Wales (or Kate Middleton as she’s popularly known).</p>
<p>It is clear the nearly 1,000-year-old institution of the monarchy and its tradition of “<a href="https://news.northeastern.edu/2024/03/14/kate-middleton-photo-pr-crisis/">never complain, never explain</a>” is being tested by social media and its power to spread rumours and misinformation. The palace’s public relations team has underestimated how difficult it is to manage relationships with social media audiences. Their reactive attempts to rein in speculation has turned Catherine’s health challenge into a PR disaster.</p>
<p>Social media, with its lax regulations and freer environment, offers a more
open forum for users to say whatever they like about the royals. It’s served as a hotbed for Catherine conspiracies, particularly on TikTok. These theories are as wild as they are ridiculous, from Catherine being a prisoner in the palace to her hiding in <a href="https://www.prdaily.com/kate-middleton-stanley-alabama-retail/">Taylor Swift’s London home</a>.</p>
<p>What should have been a simple announcement to a sympathetic public about a popular royal having cancer turned into a spider’s web of competing conspiracy theories across social media. How did it all go so terribly wrong?</p>
<h2>I’ve lost track, what happened?</h2>
<p>All was well with the Prince and Princess of Wales when they were filmed attending church on Christmas Day. As usual when royals are out in public, the scene was picture perfect with everyone dutifully smiling for the cameras in “<a href="https://www.harpersbazaar.com/celebrity/latest/a46227698/kate-middleton-royal-blue-christmas-day-church-service-prince-william-kids/">co-ordinated</a>” outfits.</p>
<p>Two weeks later, Kensington Palace announced Catherine had undergone planned abdominal surgery, with <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Culture/princess-kate-hospitalized-after-planned-abdominal-surgery-palace/story?id=106441561">palace sources</a> telling media the surgery had been “successful” and she would need two weeks to recover. </p>
<p>On January 29, the palace announced Catherine had returned home to recuperate. <a href="https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/tradition/a46569739/king-charles-discharged-from-hospital/">Unlike King Charles</a> when he released news of his cancer diagnosis on February 5, Catherine was not photographed leaving hospital. This was the first PR misstep. She had appeared outside hospital soon after giving birth to her three children, but this time she remained uncharacteristically out of the public eye.</p>
<p>Almost a month later, when Prince William <a href="https://au.lifestyle.yahoo.com/prince-william-pulls-memorial-godfather-211406977.html?amp;guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAG6tOzuXsqZXP6G2nLLd-lnWzZhYKHVJ5TJ-w5XCCfgMjerRrR8v1R8unjtcoQTbvPDsVt3mtTcZ_g0os6zwOuEFfMKCh0kfEExvz-dB2FG0uqcy6-GoryjvG99TEhMli66hNZLjLENmMhq1mwoV7GmM0AYezMDsZtZVtONH9C1b&guccounter=2">unexpectedly withdrew</a> from his godfather’s memorial citing “personal reasons”, social media users started asking “Where is Princess Kate?”. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/kate-middleton-is-having-preventive-chemotherapy-for-cancer-what-does-this-mean-226461">Kate Middleton is having 'preventive chemotherapy' for cancer. What does this mean?</a>
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<p>Used to a steady stream of content about the royal family, the public were unsurprisingly questioning if there was more to Catherine’s abdominal surgery than they were being told.</p>
<p>In a rare reactive move, the palace tried to quell questions about Catherine’s whereabouts by releasing a <a href="https://people.com/palace-responds-kate-middleton-conspiracy-theories-online-surgery-recovery-rare-statement-8602191">statement</a> reiterating that she would not be returning to public duties until Easter. </p>
<p>On March 4, US outlet <a href="https://www.tmz.com/2024/03/04/kate-middleton-seen-spotted-public-first-time-mystery-hospitalization/">TMZ published</a> a paparazzi photo of Catherine driving with her mother. Social media audiences asked if it really was Catherine.</p>
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<p>Over the next week, conspiracy theories about Catherine’s absence reached frenzied levels. To show everything was fine, Kensington Palace released a <a href="https://twitter.com/KensingtonRoyal/status/1766750995445387393?s=20">Mother’s Day photo</a> of Catherine and her children on their social media accounts. Social media users spotted apparently edited flaws and global news agencies announced “<a href="https://apnews.com/article/kate-princess-photo-surgery-ca91acf667c87c6c70a7838347d6d4fb">kill orders</a>”, saying the image had been manipulated. The next day, Catherine <a href="https://twitter.com/KensingtonRoyal/status/1767135566645092616">apologised</a> on social media for editing the photo.</p>
<p>Although royals have been <a href="https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/tradition/a60191061/royal-photoshop-history/">editing their pictures</a> for centuries, it seems particularly digitally naive of the palace’s PR team to release such an obviously edited image into an already cynical social media environment, creating fodder for more conspiracy theories. </p>
<p>Mainstream news outlets then joined social media users in asking questions about Catherine’s absence. Although this media attention did not legitimise wild conspiracies, in some ways it fuelled them. </p>
<p>Days later, TMZ <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erWJNmbrECs">published footage</a> of Catherine and William shopping. At this point in the media chaos, many social media users claimed it was fake.</p>
<p>This intense public speculation finally ended on March 23, when Catherine <a href="https://twitter.com/KensingtonRoyal/status/1771235267837321694?s=20">released a video</a> explaining her extended absence after abdominal surgery was caused by the surgeons discovering cancer.</p>
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<p>During a crisis, the public crave transparency, authenticity, honesty and reassurance. These elements were missing in the royal PR team’s carefully worded statements made directly to mainstream media along with reactive, overly curated social media posts.</p>
<p>By providing scant details, the palace seemed to believe they could control public perception. But public image is increasingly difficult to control.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/wheres-kate-speculation-about-the-missing-princess-is-proof-the-palaces-media-playbook-needs-a-re-write-225562">Where’s Kate? Speculation about the 'missing' princess is proof the Palace’s media playbook needs a re-write</a>
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<h2>The double-edged sword of social media</h2>
<p>After Princess Diana’s death in a paparazzi-chase car accident, privacy laws and <a href="https://time.com/4914324/princess-diana-anniversary-paparazzi-tabloid-media/">media regulations</a> forbade the most invasive breaches of the royal family’s privacy, particularly for her children, princes William and Harry. However, tabloid appetite for uncontrolled access soon returned once the princes became adults. </p>
<p>Recently, Harry and his wife Meghan have been involved in <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/prince-harry-his-many-lawsuits-against-press-2023-12-15/">several lawsuits</a> against media companies over breaches of privacy, including phone hacking.</p>
<p>The rise of social media has typically been viewed as a tool that gives royals more control over their image through the curation of their own personal content. Previously, the fact Catherine was the one <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/kate-middleton-cutest-family-photos-2018-5">taking photos</a> of her children was seen as a sign of authenticity and being down to earth (as much as a princess could be). </p>
<p>Yet, social media is both a blessing and a curse for the management of public reputations. </p>
<p>The perpetuation of contested facts and theories on social media in the wake of Princess Catherine’s unexplained absence shows how difficult it is to curate a controlled image using social media. Lack of verified information in mainstream media helps fuel speculative flames.</p>
<p>While <a href="https://www.thedrum.com/news/2024/03/22/where-the-palace-lost-the-plot-and-what-we-can-learn-about-pr-and-empathy-kategate">PR experts</a> believe it is understandable and appropriate for Catherine and her family to have privacy during this time, more timely, direct and honest communication would have gone a long way
to prevent relentless gossip. </p>
<p>Once rumours and conspiracies gained momentum, the palace perhaps thought the less information provided, the better. However, silence during a crisis just fuels more speculation because the lack of information makes it look like there is something to hide. </p>
<p>Catherine’s personal video announcing her cancer diagnosis helped end the social media frenzy. This shows a simple, clear statement posted by Kensington Palace to social media weeks ago would likely have avoided the PR disaster and provided Catherine the privacy she so clearly needs.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-kate-middleton-photo-scandal-when-does-editing-become-manipulation-225647">The Kate Middleton photo scandal: When does editing become manipulation?</a>
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<p>The palace is now <a href="https://www.sheknows.com/entertainment/articles/2986509/kate-middleton-cancer-pr-disaster/">being criticised</a> for complicating a situation that was relatively simple in retrospect. Many social media users are also upset Catherine took public blame for the photoshopping incident.</p>
<p>Any organisation that deals with the media to maintain positive reputations, including the British monarchy, has no choice but to adapt to all kinds of media, including social media. The long-time practice of keeping calm and carrying on amid controversy and the 24-hour gossip cycle doesn’t work in the era of TikTok, X and YouTube. </p>
<p>In the absence of trusted information, social media will do what it does best: take mostly innocuous online chatter and amplify it until it goes viral.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/226490/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What should have been a simple announcement to a sympathetic public turned into a spider’s web of conspiracy theories across social media. How did it all go so terribly wrong?Victoria Fielding, Lecturer, University of AdelaideSaira Ali, Senior Lecturer in Media, University of AdelaideLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2264612024-03-23T23:30:03Z2024-03-23T23:30:03ZKate Middleton is having ‘preventive chemotherapy’ for cancer. What does this mean?<p>Catherine, Princess of Wales, is undergoing treatment for cancer. In a video thanking followers for their messages of support after her major abdominal surgery, the Princess of Wales explained, “tests after the operation found cancer had been present.” </p>
<p>“My medical team therefore advised that I should undergo a course of preventative chemotherapy and I am now in the early stages of that treatment,” she said in the two-minute video. </p>
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<p>No further details have been released about the Princess of Wales’ treatment.</p>
<p>But many have been asking what preventive chemotherapy is and how effective it can be. Here’s what we know about this type of treatment. </p>
<h2>It’s not the same as preventing cancer</h2>
<p>To <a href="https://www.cancer.org.au/about-us/how-we-help/prevention">prevent cancer developing</a>, lifestyle changes such as diet, exercise and sun protection are <a href="https://www.cancer.org.au/about-us/how-we-help/prevention">recommended</a>. </p>
<p>Tamoxifen, a hormone therapy drug can be used to reduce the risk of cancer for some patients at <a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/breast-cancer/in-depth/breast-cancer/art-20045353">high risk of breast cancer</a>. </p>
<p>Aspirin <a href="https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/research/aspirin-cancer-risk">can also be used</a> for those at high risk of bowel and other cancers. </p>
<h2>How can chemotherapy be used as preventive therapy?</h2>
<p>In terms of treating cancer, prevention refers to giving chemotherapy after the cancer has been removed, to prevent the cancer from returning. </p>
<p>If a cancer is localised (limited to a certain part of the body) with no evidence on scans of it spreading to distant sites, local treatments such as surgery or radiotherapy can remove all of the cancer. </p>
<p>If, however, cancer is first detected after it has spread to distant parts of the body at diagnosis, clinicians use treatments such as chemotherapy (anti-cancer drugs), hormones or immunotherapy, which circulate <a href="https://www.healthline.com/health/cancer/metastatic-cancer">around the body</a> . </p>
<p>The other use for chemotherapy is to add it before or after surgery or radiotherapy, to prevent the primary cancer <a href="https://www.verywellhealth.com/adjuvant-therapy-5198903">coming back</a>. The surgery may have cured the cancer. However, in some cases, undetectable microscopic cells may have spread into the bloodstream to distant sites. This will result in the cancer returning, months or years later. </p>
<p>With some cancers, treatment with chemotherapy, given before or after the local surgery or radiotherapy, can kill those cells and prevent the cancer coming back.</p>
<p>If we can’t see these cells, how do we know that giving additional chemotherapy to prevent recurrence is effective? We’ve learnt this from clinical trials. Researchers have compared patients who had surgery only with those whose surgery was followed by additional (or often called adjuvant) chemotherapy. The additional therapy resulted in patients not relapsing and surviving longer. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/princess-of-wales-and-king-charles-one-in-two-people-develop-cancer-during-their-lives-the-diseases-and-treatments-explained-226456">Princess of Wales and King Charles: one in two people develop cancer during their lives – the diseases and treatments explained</a>
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<h2>How effective is preventive therapy?</h2>
<p>The effectiveness of preventive therapy depends on the type of cancer and the type of chemotherapy. </p>
<p>Let’s consider the common example of bowel cancer, which is at high risk of returning after surgery because of its size or spread to local lymph glands. The <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7564362/">first chemotherapy tested</a> improved survival by 15%. With more intense chemotherapy, the chance of surviving six years is approaching 80%. </p>
<p>Preventive chemotherapy is usually given for three to six months. </p>
<h2>How does chemotherapy work?</h2>
<p>Many of the chemotherapy drugs stop cancer cells dividing by disrupting the DNA (genetic material) in the centre of the cells. To improve efficacy, drugs which work at different sites in the cell are given in combinations. </p>
<p>Chemotherapy is not selective for cancer cells. It kills any dividing cells.</p>
<p>But cancers consist of a higher proportion of dividing cells than the normal body cells. A <a href="https://www.canceraustralia.gov.au/cancer-types/breast-cancer/treatment/chemotherapy/how-does-chemotherapy-work#:%7E:text=Chemotherapy%20works%20by%20killing%20cells%20that%20are%20rapidly,cells%20can%20repair%20the%20damage%20and%20can%20recover.">greater proportion of the cancer is killed</a> with each course of chemotherapy.</p>
<p>Normal cells can recover between courses, which are usually given three to four weeks apart.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-chemotherapy-and-how-does-it-work-76403">Explainer: what is chemotherapy and how does it work?</a>
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<h2>What are the side effects?</h2>
<p>The side effects of chemotherapy are usually reversible and are seen in parts of the body where there is normally a high turnover of cells. </p>
<p>The production of blood cells, for example, is temporarily disrupted. When your white blood cell count is low, there is an increased risk of infection. </p>
<p>Cell death in the lining of the gut leads to mouth ulcers, nausea and vomiting and bowel disturbance. </p>
<p>Certain drugs sometimes given during chemotherapy can attack other organs, such as causing numbness in the hands and feet. </p>
<p>There are also generalised symptoms such as <a href="https://www.cancervic.org.au/cancer-information/treatments/treatments-types/chemotherapy/side_effects_of_chemotherapy.html">fatigue</a>. </p>
<p>Given that preventive chemotherapy given after surgery starts when there is no evidence of any cancer remaining after local surgery, patients can usually resume normal activities within weeks of completing the courses of chemotherapy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/226461/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ian Olver receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>Here’s what we know about this type of treatment.Ian Olver, Adjunct Professsor, School of Psychology, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of AdelaideLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2264562024-03-23T14:59:14Z2024-03-23T14:59:14ZPrincess of Wales and King Charles: one in two people develop cancer during their lives – the diseases and treatments explained<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/583814/original/file-20240323-24-4xff0t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C8%2C6000%2C4778&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/london-uk-10-september-2019-duchess-1506543323">B. Lenoir/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Princess of Wales released a <a href="https://x.com/KensingtonRoyal/status/1771235267837321694?s=20">moving video message</a> on March 22 to address speculation about her health. In it, the future queen disclosed that she’d been <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-68641710">diagnosed with cancer</a> following tests conducted after she underwent major abdominal surgery at a clinic in London in January. </p>
<p>Catherine explained that she was undergoing “preventative chemotherapy” – but emphasised that her surgery had been successful, and that she was “well” and “getting stronger every day”.</p>
<p>The message was the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/mar/22/princess-kate-cancer-royal-family-health-annus-horribilis">second announcement</a> of a royal family cancer diagnosis in recent weeks. On February 5, Buckingham Palace <a href="https://www.royal.uk/a-statement-from-buckingham-palace-5Feb24">published a statement</a> that King Charles III had been diagnosed with an undisclosed form of <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68208157">cancer, unrelated</a> to the treatment he had been receiving for an enlarged prostate.</p>
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<p>The statement said that he had begun “regular treatments”. The king postponed all public-facing duties during his treatment, but <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68213383">reportedly continued</a> with his “constitutional role as head of state, including completing paperwork and holding private meetings”.</p>
<p>Cancer is the <a href="https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/cancer">leading cause of death</a> worldwide. <a href="https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/cancer/#:%7E:text=The%20cancerous%20cells%20can%20invade,of%20cancer%20during%20their%20lifetime.">One in two</a> people will develop some form of cancer in their lifetime – so the condition will affect almost every family. However, many cancers can be cured if, as appears to be the case with the king, the condition is <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68213383">detected early</a> and treated effectively.</p>
<h2>What is cancer?</h2>
<p>Our bodies are made up of more than 100 billion cells, and cancer typically starts with changes in a small group of cells – or even a single one.</p>
<p>We have different cell types depending upon where in the body they are and the function that the cell has. The size, amount and function of each of these cells is normally tightly regulated by genes – groups of codes held within our DNA – that instruct cells how to grow and divide.</p>
<p>However, changes (mutations) to DNA can alter the way cells grow and multiply – often forming a lump, or solid tumour. Cancers can also develop in blood cells, such as white blood cell cancer which is known as leukaemia. This type of cancer does not form solid tumours; instead, the cancer builds up in the blood or sometimes the marrow in the core of bones, where blood cells are produced. </p>
<p>In all, there are <a href="https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/what-is-cancer/how-cancer-starts/types-of-cancer#:%7E:text=For%20example%2C%20nerves%20and%20muscles,of%20cell%20they%20start%20in.">more than 200</a> types of cancer, but all start with mutations in the DNA contained within each and every cell. </p>
<h2>What exactly are mutations?</h2>
<p>Think of your DNA as a big recipe book, and your genes as individual recipes for making different dishes. Mutations are smudges or missing words from this recipe that can result in key ingredients not being added into the mix. </p>
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<p>Regardless of the type of cancer or the cells from which it develops, mutations in our genes can result in a cell no longer understanding its instructions. </p>
<p>These mutations can happen by chance when dividing, but can also be the result of lifestyle choices such as <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6141049/">smoking</a>, <a href="https://www.ndph.ox.ac.uk/news/new-genetic-study-confirms-that-alcohol-is-a-direct-cause-of-cancer#:%7E:text=These%20mutations%20both%20disrupt%20the,aldehyde%20dehydrogenase%202%20(ALDH2).">drinking</a>, and <a href="https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/obesity/physical-activity-fact-sheet">inactivity</a>.</p>
<p>Research has found that in order for a normal cell to turn into a cancerous cell, anywhere from <a href="https://www.sanger.ac.uk/news_item/1-10-mutations-are-needed-drive-cancer-scientists-find/">one to ten different mutations</a> are normally required.</p>
<h2>How is cancer treated?</h2>
<p>Treatment options for cancer depend on a variety of factors, including where your cancer is, how large it is, and whether it has spread to other parts of the body. The main treatments for cancer include surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy. </p>
<p>Chemotherapy uses drugs to target and kill cells that are rapidly dividing in our bodies. This approach is effective at targeting fast-growing cells in various cancers – but also has negative side effects. It also targets healthy cells that rapidly divide, such as hair and the cells lining our digestive system. This can lead to commonly reported <a href="https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/chemotherapy/side-effects/">side-effects</a> such as hair loss, nausea and diarrhoea. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/treatment/chemotherapy?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjw-_mvBhDwARIsAA-Q0Q6tyQxTuBzU7vVD7SHjQ5dF-fRdqnL7S74-k5LXyTqODydsrPfJVsoaAkgyEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds">Chemotherapy</a> can be used both preventatively – as in the case of the princess – and therapeutically. </p>
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<p>Preventative chemotherapy, also known as <a href="https://www.cancer.gov/publications/dictionaries/cancer-terms/def/adjuvant-therapy">adjuvant chemotherapy</a>, is given after surgery or other primary treatments to eliminate any remaining cancer cells in the body. It aims to reduce the risk of the cancer returning (known as recurrence). </p>
<p>Therapeutic chemotherapy is used as a treatment option for cancer that has spread or is well established, such as advanced-stage cancers. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/treatment/surgery/about">Surgery</a> involves the physical removal of cancerous tissues as well as nearby lymph nodes – small glands which act as filters in your body that cancers can spread through – to eliminate the tumour. Surgery is often used to remove localised cancers that haven’t spread throughout the body. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/treatment/radiotherapy">Radiotherapy</a> uses high-energy radiation beams that are able to target specific areas where tumour cells are located to destroy or shrink the tumour. Radiotherapy can be applied externally or internally. </p>
<p>Chemotherapy, surgery, and radiotherapy are often combined in cancer treatment to improve outcomes for patients. </p>
<p>Thanks to developments in cancer research over the last 50 years, survival rates have improved greatly – although the rate of improvement has <a href="https://news.cancerresearchuk.org/2024/02/02/world-cancer-day-2024/#:%7E:text=Improvements%20in%20cancer%20survival%20have%20slowed%20in%20recent%20years&text=Survival%20increased%20three%20to%20five,consistently%20lags%20behind%20comparable%20countries.">slowed recently</a>. Cancer survival depends on various factors such as age – people under 40 have a <a href="https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/age">greater chance</a> of survival – overall health and fitness, as well as family history. </p>
<h2>What you should do</h2>
<p>Particular changes in your body or warning symptoms could indicate the presence of cancer. These include, but are not limited to:</p>
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<li>Unexplained weight loss;</li>
<li>Fatigue that doesn’t improve with rest;</li>
<li>Changes in bowel or bladder habits;</li>
<li>Persistent cough or coughing up blood;</li>
<li>Difficulty swallowing;</li>
<li>Persistent pain;</li>
<li>Noticing lumps, such as in a breast or testicle.</li>
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<p>The symptoms may not necessarily be the result of cancer. But it is important to get checked by a doctor if you notice anything out of the ordinary or have had persistent symptoms that don’t ease. Early detection and treatment can <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.aay9040">significantly improve</a> outcomes for many types of cancer.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/226456/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gavin Metcalf does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Almost every family will be affected by a cancer diagnosis at some point – and the UK’s royal family is no different.Gavin Metcalf, Cancer Biologist and Lecturer in Biomedical Science, Anglia Ruskin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2263032024-03-21T05:48:21Z2024-03-21T05:48:21ZAttempts to access Kate Middleton’s medical records are no surprise. Such breaches are all too common<p>The <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-20/claim-hospital-staff-tried-to-access-kate-middleton-health-info/103608066">alleged</a> data breach involving Catherine, Princess of Wales tells us something about health privacy. If hospital staff can apparently access a future queen’s medical records without authorisation, it can happen to you. </p>
<p>Indeed it may have already happened to you, given many breaches of health data go under the radar.</p>
<p>Here’s why breaches of health data keep on happening.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/yes-kate-middletons-photo-was-doctored-but-so-are-a-lot-of-images-we-see-today-225553">Yes, Kate Middleton's photo was doctored. But so are a lot of images we see today</a>
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<h2>What did we learn this week?</h2>
<p>Details of the alleged data breaches, by <a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/royals/breaking-kate-middleton-three-london-32401247">up to three staff</a> at The London Clinic, emerged in the UK media this week. These breaches are alleged to have occurred after the princess had abdominal surgery at the private hospital earlier this year.</p>
<p>The UK Information Commissioner’s Office <a href="https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/media-centre/news-and-blogs/2024/03/ico-statement-in-response-to-reports-of-data-breach-at-the-london-clinic/">is investigating</a>. Its report should provide some clarity about what medical data was improperly accessed, in what form and by whom. But it is unlikely to identify whether this data was given to a third party, such as a media organisation.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/after-the-medicare-breach-we-should-be-cautious-about-moving-our-health-records-online-80472">After the Medicare breach, we should be cautious about moving our health records online</a>
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<h2>Health data isn’t always as secure as we’d hope</h2>
<p>Medical records are inherently sensitive, providing insights about individuals and often about biological relatives.</p>
<p>In an ideal world, only the “right people” would have access to these records. These are people who “need to know” that information and are aware of the responsibility of accessing it.</p>
<p>Best practice digital health systems typically try to restrict overall access to databases through hack-resistant firewalls. They also try to limit access to specific types of data through grades of access.</p>
<p>This means a hospital accountant, nurse or cleaner does not get to see everything. Such systems also incorporate blocks or alarms where there is potential abuse, such as unauthorised copying.</p>
<p>But in practice each health records ecosystem – in GP and specialist suites, pathology labs, research labs, hospitals – is less robust, often with fewer safeguards and weaker supervision.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/vaccination-status-when-your-medical-information-is-private-and-when-its-not-168846">Vaccination status – when your medical information is private and when it's not</a>
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<h2>This has happened before</h2>
<p>Large health-care providers and insurers, including major hospitals or chains of hospitals, have a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/dec/22/st-vincents-health-australia-hack-cyberattack-data-stolen-hospital-aged-care-what-to-do">worrying</a> <a href="https://www.afr.com/technology/medical-information-leaked-in-nsw-health-hack-20210608-p57z7k">history</a> of <a href="https://www.innovationaus.com/oaic-takes-pathology-company-to-court-over-data-breach/">digital breaches</a>. </p>
<p>Those breaches include hackers accessing the records of millions of people. The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/11/medical-data-hacked-from-10m-australians-begins-to-appear-on-dark-web">Medibank</a> data breach involved more than ten million people. The <a href="https://www.hipaajournal.com/healthcare-data-breach-statistics/">Anthem</a> data breach in the United States involved more than 78 million people.</p>
<p>Hospitals and clinics have also had breaches specific to a particular individual. Many of those breaches involved unauthorised sighting (and often copying) of hardcopy or digital files, for example by nurses, clinicians and administrative staff. </p>
<p>For instance, this has happened to public figures such as <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-15-me-britney15-story.html">singer</a> <a href="https://journals.lww.com/healthcaremanagerjournal/abstract/2009/01000/health_information_privacy__why_trust_matters.11.aspx">Britney Spears</a>, actor <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/10/nyregion/10clooney.html">George Clooney</a> and former United Kingdom prime minister <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/mar/20/when-fame-and-medical-privacy-clash-kate-and-other-crises-of-confidentiality">Gordon Brown</a>.</p>
<p>Indeed, the Princess of Wales has had her medical privacy breached before, in 2012, while in hospital pregnant with her first child. This was no high-tech hacking of health data.</p>
<p>Hoax callers from an Australian radio station <a href="https://theconversation.com/did-2day-fm-break-the-law-and-does-it-matter-11250">tricked</a> hospital staff into divulging details over the phone of the then Duchess of Cambridge’s health care.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/did-2day-fm-break-the-law-and-does-it-matter-11250">Did 2Day FM break the law? And does it matter?</a>
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<h2>Tip of the iceberg</h2>
<p>Some unauthorised access to medical information goes undetected or is indeed undetectable unless there is an employment dispute or media involvement. Some is identified by colleagues.</p>
<p>Records about your health <em>might</em> have been improperly sighted by someone in the health system. But you are rarely in a position to evaluate the data management of a clinic, hospital, health department or pathology lab. </p>
<p>So we have to trust people do the right thing.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-hipaa-5-questions-answered-about-the-medical-privacy-law-that-protects-trumps-test-results-and-yours-147805">What is HIPAA? 5 questions answered about the medical privacy law that protects Trump's test results and yours</a>
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<h2>How could we improve things?</h2>
<p>Health professions have long emphasised the need to protect these records. For instance, medical ethics bodies <a href="https://www.bmj.com/content/350/bmj.h2255">condemn</a> medical students who <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-14/picture-sharing-app-for-doctors-raises-privacy-concerns/5389226">share</a> intimate or otherwise inappropriate images of patients. </p>
<p>Different countries have various approaches to protecting who has access to medical records and under what circumstances.</p>
<p>In Australia, for instance, we have a mix of complex and inconsistent laws that vary across jurisdictions, some covering privacy in general, others specific to health data. There isn’t one comprehensive law and set of standards <a href="https://theconversation.com/governments-privacy-review-has-some-strong-recommendations-now-we-really-need-action-200079">vigorously administered</a> by one well-resourced watchdog.</p>
<p>In Australia, it’s mandatory to report <a href="https://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy/notifiable-data-breaches">data breaches</a>, including breaches of health data. This reporting system is currently <a href="https://theconversation.com/governments-privacy-review-has-some-strong-recommendations-now-we-really-need-action-200079">being updated</a>. But this won’t necessarily prevent data breaches.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/governments-privacy-review-has-some-strong-recommendations-now-we-really-need-action-200079">Government's privacy review has some strong recommendations – now we really need action</a>
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<p>Instead, we need to incentivise Australian organisations to improve how they handle sensitive health data.</p>
<p>The best policy <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1475-4932.12693">nudges</a> involve increasing penalties for breaches. This is so organisations act as responsible custodians rather than negligent owners of health data.</p>
<p>We also need to step-up enforcement of data breaches and make it easier for victims to sue for breaches of privacy – princesses and tradies alike.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/wheres-kate-speculation-about-the-missing-princess-is-proof-the-palaces-media-playbook-needs-a-re-write-225562">Where’s Kate? Speculation about the 'missing' princess is proof the Palace’s media playbook needs a re-write</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/226303/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dr Arnold spent several years as the Australian representative on OECD Health Informatics working parties. He is a former director of the Australian Privacy Foundation</span></em></p>If it can happen to a future queen, it can happen to you. Maybe it already has.Bruce Baer Arnold, Associate Professor, School of Law, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2256472024-03-14T19:11:39Z2024-03-14T19:11:39ZThe Kate Middleton photo scandal: When does editing become manipulation?<p>On March 10, in celebration of Mother’s Day in the United Kingdom, Kensington Palace <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C4U_IqTNaqU/?hl=en">shared a photo</a> of Kate Middleton, the Princess of Wales, with her three children. It was the first photograph shared of Kate since December and was <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/10/uk/kate-princess-wales-photo-released-intl/index.html">widely reported on by news outlets</a>.</p>
<p>Public interest and discussion about Kate’s well-being have reached a tipping point in recent months. She had not been seen at a public event since Christmas Day, and in mid-January, it was announced that she had undergone a <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C2NDoYrN-9r/?hl=en">planned surgery</a>. </p>
<p>There is <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/prince-philip-queen-elizabeth-husband-released-from-hospital-london-heart-surgery/">considerable visual precedent</a> of photographs and video taken of royal family members after <a href="https://www.hellomagazine.com/healthandbeauty/health-and-fitness/20210925122524/kate-middleton-duchess-of-cambridge-children-pregnancy-birth-post-baby-body/">medical procedures or events</a>. However, the distinct lack of photos in this case has left the media and public to fill in the information gaps with their own <a href="https://graziadaily.co.uk/celebrity/news/tiktok-sleuthers-royal-scandal/">commentary and conspiracy theories</a>. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-pr-silence-around-princess-kates-well-being-fuels-frenzy-about-photo-mishap-225642">The PR silence around Princess Kate's well-being fuels frenzy about photo mishap</a>
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<p>The timing of the photograph suggested that it was taken to quell all the discussion about Kate. Very quickly, however, social media users began to perform <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/digital-image-forensics/">digital forensics</a> on the photograph, questioning everything from the <a href="https://x.com/oldenoughtosay/status/1766911094281359553?s=46&t=9A3pHGNi5TAYuffaoqvktQ">foliage pictured</a>, to the <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@allynaston/video/7344921409816251678">clothing</a>, to the <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/24098724/kate-middleton-editing-photo-explained">obvious and amateur photo-editing</a>. The controversy was only fueled further by Kensington Palace’s <a href="https://pagesix.com/2024/03/11/royal-family/kensington-palace-refuses-to-release-original-kate-middleton-photo-after-botched-editing-job/">refusal to release the unedited version of the photo</a>.</p>
<p>The careful, detailed and obsessively close reading of the photo was, in part, due to the context into which it was published: the internet was looking for the “proof of life” this photo was intended to provide. The internet was not convinced.</p>
<p>Mere hours later, the Associated Press released a <a href="https://twitter.com/chrisshipitv/status/1766944328847364201?s=20">“kill order,”</a> stating “it appears that the source has manipulated the image. No replacement photo will be sent.” Many other news organizations and photo agencies quickly followed, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/princess-wales-kate-surgery-photo-manipulated-3863e9ac78aec420a91e4f315297c348">retracting and removing the image</a>.</p>
<p>In response to the incident, <a href="https://twitter.com/KensingtonRoyal/status/1767135566645092616">a statement attributed to Kate</a> was issued the following day where she admitted “I do occasionally experiment with editing” and apologized for any confusion the photography may have caused.</p>
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<h2>What we expect of photographs</h2>
<p>Photographs have always held an uneasy position between evidence and art, or truth and fiction. <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/press/exhibitions/2012/faking-it">Since the technology was invented</a>, photographs have been <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXe9WCeccOw">staged or “faked,”</a> edited and manipulated. While the advent of digital photography has brought with it tools and techniques that makes altering photographs much quicker and easier, the malleability of the photographic form is part of the story of photography.</p>
<p>The ability to record what is in front of the camera lens is central to how and why photography has developed as something society considered a source of truth or evidence. In journalism, science and public administration, photographs are used as proof in a variety of contexts where identification is a central, significant and necessary outcome. </p>
<p>However, because photographs can be altered, the institutions and individuals that produce them are often used to verify the extent to which they were edited, or <a href="https://twitter.com/misanharriman/status/1767883350184796447?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet">vouch for their veracity</a>. Institutions have <a href="https://www.worldpressphoto.org/contest/2024/verification-process/what-counts-as-manipulation">imposed standards, practices and policies</a> to make photography legible as a credible format that can be used as actionable information. </p>
<p>For people to believe and trust photographs, then, there needs to be a level of trust in institutions that produce them. This is far from the first instance of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/06/donald-trump-inauguration-crowd-size-photos-edited">a political institution losing public trust by editing photographs</a>. As the controversy continues, the public becomes less likely to believe the images Kensington Palace releases. </p>
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<p>This is evidenced by the negative public reaction to the photograph published the next day of <a href="https://www.eonline.com/ca/news/1397155/agency-behind-kate-middleton-and-prince-william-car-photo-addresses-photoshop-claims">Prince William, allegedly with Kate</a>, carpooling on their way to their respective appointments. </p>
<p>Institutional response has been similarly critical, as <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/11/uk/kate-royal-photograph-edited-intl-gbr/index.html">CNN announced</a> they were “now reviewing all handout photos previously provided by Kensington Palace,” and <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2024/03/14/kensington-palace-compared-to-north-korea-by-news-boss/">Agence France-Presse (AFP) stating</a> Kensington Palace is “no longer a trusted source.”</p>
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<h2>Editing: A fine line</h2>
<p>How much editing is too much? The <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/truth-or-fake/20240311-kate-gate-how-might-have-the-princess-of-wales-photo-been-edited">#KateGate controversy</a> has pushed this conversation front and centre. When does a photograph tip from edited or enhanced to manipulated and deceptive? </p>
<p>When it comes to contemporary celebrity culture, there is an expectation that most, if not all, photographs circulated are retouched. Some smartphones even have a “<a href="https://www.samsung.com/za/support/mobile-devices/galaxy-camera-how-do-i-use-the-beauty-face-mode/">Beauty Face</a>” filter that can “automatically adjust the photo to create a more visually pleasing photo.” Celebrities, <a href="https://www.allure.com/story/zendaya-posts-unretouched-photo">like Zendaya</a>, who take a stand against retouching, are touted as inspiring for doing so. </p>
<p>In photojournalism, the colour balance and exposure of photographs are <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/11/uk/kate-royal-photograph-edited-intl-gbr/index.html">regularly adjusted</a>. This is seen as justifiable if the changes mean the photograph is a more accurate representation of the scene but does not change the composition or contents of the photograph. </p>
<p>However, other editing practices, like creating a composite image from many photographs of the same event, are seen as taking it too far. During the Great Depression, Arthur Rothstein’s photograph of a bleached steer skull caused significant controversy because he had moved the skull to a section of cracked dirt in direct sunlight which made the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00028533.2001.11951665">photograph more dramatic</a>.</p>
<p>Rothstein was criticized for manipulating the scene, and thus, interfered with the integrity required for a documentary photograph. His response was that by moving the skull he had created a photograph that was a more accurate reflection of the crisis.</p>
<p>Despite photography’s shaky claim to an authentic truth or evidence as an impartial record of reality, it is expected to function as such. Institutions confer <a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/the-burden-of-representation">credibility to photographs</a>, and photographs are put to use by institutions as “truthful evidence” as a result. </p>
<p>A central issue is that the photograph at the centre of this controversy was implied to provide evidence of Kate’s well-being. As the photograph was likely taken months before, heavily edited, and where the original unedited files were not produced for reference, the palace’s response was not sufficient to provide justification for the level of editing — whatever the reason for it might have been.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225647/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bethany Berard does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What can we learn when a picture inspires ten thousand Tweets and TikToks.Bethany Berard, PhD Candidate & Instructor, Communication and Media, Carleton UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2256422024-03-14T14:48:15Z2024-03-14T14:48:15ZThe PR silence around Princess Kate’s well-being fuels frenzy about photo mishap<p>Positive public reaction was probably top of mind for Kate Middleton, the Princess of Wales, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/world/europe/princess-kate-middleton-photo-edit-apology.html">when she purportedly engaged in some homespun editing of a a family picture that has landed her in the international media’s bullseye</a>.</p>
<p>While some might consider the brouhaha surrounding her alleged photo editing mishap a tempest in a teapot, it teaches an important lesson on the value of employing strategic public relations counsel to build trust and transparency and avoid creating a media crisis.</p>
<p>There were several conditions that created a perfect storm for the photo to come under the media microscope. First, the Royal Family has been impacted by serious health issues — <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Culture/kate-middleton-surgery-photo-timeline/story?id=108017783">Kensington Palace says Kate was hospitalized in January</a> for an unspecified abdominal surgery and is now recovering, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-68208157">while Buckingham Palace says, and King Charles has confirmed, that he has been diagnosed with cancer</a> and is now undergoing treatment.</p>
<p>But how <a href="https://people.com/why-king-charles-disclosed-diagnosis-kate-middleton-private-exclusive-8548249">each announcement was made</a> makes all the difference in why King Charles has garnered so much sympathy while the Princess of Wales’s situation has been regarded with suspicion and criticism.</p>
<h2>Two different PR approaches</h2>
<p>The public relations team at Buckingham Palace did an effective strategic communications job of telling the public about the nature of the King’s illness and then creating a narrative for his subsequent treatment. </p>
<p>Since the diagnosis, <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/a-bit-of-a-surprise-to-see-king-charles-make-appearance-after-diagnosis-royal-expert-1.6764521">he has made several public and virtual appearances</a>, given updates on his health and treatment, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-68538031">showcased his commitment to continued service</a> and <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/king-charles-cancer-how-to-talk-b1009983.html">shown deep empathy for fellow cancer patients</a>. </p>
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<p>There are good reasons for this that are in the public interest — <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0188258">men do not get themselves checked for prostate cancer enough</a> and the King’s publicity around the matter may spur them to do so, thus saving lives.</p>
<p>For the Princess of Wales, there are several factors at play that might make such an approach more complicated. As a woman, she faces different standards and reactions than men do when it comes to health and publicity. </p>
<p>In fact, it’s well-documented that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spac020">women public figures face greater criticism</a> than men, particularly around gendered notions of health and well-being. </p>
<p>So it’s reasonable to believe Kate wants and deserves privacy about the specific nature of her condition. Kensington Palace says she had abdominal surgery, that she would be in hospital for 14 days and that her recovery would take some time.</p>
<p>That level of public communications was good enough for that moment. However, since then, there’s been silence. </p>
<h2>Silence fuels suspicion, speculation</h2>
<p>Unfortunately staying silent sent a loud message to the media and public — something may be seriously wrong with the Princess of Wales. Even when sensational online speculation included theories about <a href="https://www.thecut.com/article/kate-middleton-health-update.html">whether she was dying or had passed away</a>, Kensington Palace made the serious error of remaining silent.</p>
<p>The apparent intent to protect her privacy left a media void, and social media enthusiasts and the British tabloids, in particular, abhor a vacuum. They will <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/prince-william-kate-middleton-divorce-theory-1878693">fill it with wild speculation</a> in the absence of official comment. </p>
<p>This is particularly true in the context of British celebrity, royal-watching and tabloid media, which is a highly competitive, often brutal space. Questions about Kate really heated up when <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/feb/27/prince-william-pulls-out-of-godfathers-memorial-service-over-personal-matter">Prince William cancelled his scheduled appearance at his godfather’s funeral</a> because of a “personal matter.” </p>
<p>The media’s gaze immediately returned to Kate’s condition, given the lack of transparency and strategic media outreach.</p>
<p>Kate’s silence about her condition and then the manipulated family picture were a missed opportunity both to protect her privacy and to build trust with the public.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-kate-middleton-photo-scandal-when-does-editing-become-manipulation-225647">The Kate Middleton photo scandal: When does editing become manipulation?</a>
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<p>Public communications is built on trust and transparency, so the lack of official comment and storytelling around her condition and recovery has caused a media furore. The media and the public expect information, especially about public figures like the future queen of the United Kingdom. </p>
<p>People have a certain right to privacy, but for those who will one day ascend to the British throne, there’s no absolute right to privacy, even if their leadership has become largely symbolic. So silence about Kate’s condition, surgery and recovery has created a lack of trust and transparency within the media and the public.</p>
<h2>Global maelstrom</h2>
<p>Releasing the manipulated family picture on Instagram and issuing it to the world’s biggest news agencies turned a story that was already being scrutinized into an international maelstrom after those organizations put out <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/news-agencies-withdraw-photo-uks-princess-wales-2024-03-11/">what are known as “kill notices” and withdrew the image</a>. Kensington Palace’s <a href="https://www.marieclaire.com/celebrity/royals/kensington-palace-wont-release-original-kate-photo/">refusal to provide an original, untouched photo</a> has only fuelled global speculation.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/yes-kate-middletons-photo-was-doctored-but-so-are-a-lot-of-images-we-see-today-225553">Yes, Kate Middleton's photo was doctored. But so are a lot of images we see today</a>
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<p>Princess Kate could have garnered significant social capital with the public by strategically sharing her story and — like the King did with the global community of cancer patients — built a bridge of empathy, education and shared experience. </p>
<p>This would have helped engender more trust in the princess, Kensington Palace and the Royal Family rather than diminish it. Indeed, personal and discreet storytelling regarding her condition could have created a narrative that satisfied the media’s need to know while keeping the specifics of her condition beyond the view of the always peering British and global media. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1767135566645092616"}"></div></p>
<p>The problem here is not so much altering a photo, but the fact that the entire narrative of Kate’s condition has been silence rather than effective strategic communications and storytelling about her experience.</p>
<p>The moral of the story is that sound and strategic communications counsel is priceless. More effective framing and storytelling at the time of the princess’s apparent surgery and during her recovery would have helped better protect her privacy, while fostering trust and transparency with the public.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225642/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Effective strategic communications about Kate Middleton’s condition would have helped the princess better protect her privacy, while building bridges of trust and transparency with the public.Terry Flynn, Graduate Director and Associate Professor, Master of Communications Management Program, McMaster UniversityAlex Sévigny, Associate Professor, Department of Communication Studies and Media Arts, McMaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2255622024-03-13T01:59:59Z2024-03-13T01:59:59ZWhere’s Kate? Speculation about the ‘missing’ princess is proof the Palace’s media playbook needs a re-write<p>Outside of two <a href="https://www.tmz.com/2024/03/04/kate-middleton-seen-spotted-public-first-time-mystery-hospitalization/">grainy</a> <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13184069/kate-middleton-photo-windsor-castle-prince-william-palace-royal-expert-theory.html">paparazzi</a> photos, Catherine, Princess of Wales, hasn’t been seen in public since Christmas Day 2023, when she <a href="https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/pictures/royal-family-attends-2023-sandringham-christmas-church-service/">attended a church service</a> at Sandringham.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.salon.com/2024/03/11/the-kate-middleton-mystery-a-complete-timeline-of-the-princess-of-wales-royal-family-pr-disaster/">January</a>, <a href="https://time.com/6899819/kate-middleton-appearances-surgery/">Kensington Palace announced</a> Kate Middleton (as she’s more popularly known) was to undergo “planned abdominal surgery” and wasn’t expected to return to public duties until after Easter.</p>
<p>Social media have been awash with speculation about Catherine’s health and whereabouts. Limited information has dripped out of Kensington Palace, inadvertently intensifying scrutiny. The information void has prompted onlookers to fill the space with their own theories.</p>
<p>As scrutiny reaches a fever pitch, we ask: why is the Palace’s typical media playbook no longer working? </p>
<h2>Not so ‘unprecedented’</h2>
<p>This isn’t the first time rumours about the British royal family have attracted public interest.</p>
<p>Anne Boleyn (circa 1501-1536), the second of six wives of Henry VIII, was executed after being found guilty of adultery, incest and treason. While historians differ in their interpretation of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/feb/23/anne-boleyn-guilty-adultery-biography-claims">Anne’s guilt or innocence</a>, it’s clear the charges were at least partially the result of gossip <a href="https://www.hrp.org.uk/tower-of-london/history-and-stories/anne-boleyn/#gs.5qeecd">instigated by rival factions</a> seeking power at the English court.</p>
<p>The long-reigning Queen Victoria (1819-1901) was widely regarded as as a <a href="https://www.hrp.org.uk/kensington-palace/history-and-stories/queen-victoria/#gs.5qc1ar">loyal wife and mother</a>. Yet she too became the target of gossip regarding her close friendship <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/dec/16/monarchy.stephenbates">with Scottish servant John Brown</a> after her husband, Prince Albert, died in 1861. </p>
<p>Then there were the rumours about Diana, Princess of Wales: that her son Harry was the <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2017/03/james-hewitt-prince-harry-father-princess-diana">product of an affair</a>, that she was <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2905239/Diana-pregnant-Dodi-s-child-died-Paris-car-smash-sensational-West-End-play-claim.html">pregnant with Dodi Fayed’s child</a> at the time of her death in 1997, and that <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/royal-family/princess-diana-death-conspiracy-theories-b2248362.html">her death wasn’t accidental</a>.</p>
<p>The Palace typically refuses to comment on these kinds of sensational rumours. Sometimes, though, it will reject gossip via trusted media sources, as was the case in late 2018 when <a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/palace-denies-kate-middleton-slapped-13670961">it denied there was a feud</a> between Catherine and Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex.</p>
<h2>The Palace’s strategic communications</h2>
<p>The royal family has gradually adjusted to new media and technologies, though not as quickly as the public might like. </p>
<p>On one hand, the Palace <a href="https://www.prweek.com/article/1798408/queen-elizabeths-death-announced-mix-old-new">continues its age-old tradition</a> of announcing major news on a noticeboard at the gates of Buckingham Palace. On the other, a previous tendency to hide serious illnesses – such as the cancer that claimed <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/health-and-wellbeing/king-charles-cancer-doctor-secrets-b2491426.html">King George VI’s life in 1952</a> – has been tempered by a more forthcoming approach. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-royals-have-historically-been-tight-lipped-about-their-health-but-that-never-stopped-the-gossip-222873">The royals have historically been tight-lipped about their health – but that never stopped the gossip</a>
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<p>When Queen Camilla underwent a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/mar/05/monarchy">hysterectomy in 2007</a>, the media were informed on the day of the surgery. The Palace was similarly open in its acknowledgement of Catherine’s <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/melaniehaiken/2012/12/03/pregnant-princess-kate-hospitalized-for-hyperemesis-gravidarum-which-is-what/?sh=4430a5ee3d55">hospitalisation for hyperemesis gravidarum</a> (severe nausea and vomiting) during her first pregnancy in 2012. It announced her second pregnancy in 2014 earlier than planned <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/she-said/2014/sep/27/hyperemesis-gravidarum-kate-middletons-ongoing-condition-is-much-worse-than-just-morning-sickness">due to the same condition</a>. </p>
<p>On some level, we’ve become accustomed to such updates.</p>
<h2>Internet sleuthing and a manipulated image</h2>
<p>In response to limited information about Catherine’s health, memes stepped in to fill the space. Users on X joked about her recovering from a <a href="https://x.com/THISisLULE/status/1764731759340462360?s=20">Brazilian butt lift</a>, or growing out her <a href="https://x.com/VeryBadLlama/status/1762648638684053889?s=20">bangs</a>. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1762648638684053889"}"></div></p>
<p>There were also more serious claims that she was in <a href="https://www.thelist.com/1526431/concha-calleja-kate-middleton-coma-claims/">a coma</a>, or <a href="https://x.com/holy_schnitt/status/1767283342880223466?s=20">dead</a>, or getting a <a href="https://stylecaster.com/entertainment/celebrity-news/1730035/kate-middleton-photo-wedding-ring/">divorce</a>.</p>
<p>In the midst of this speculation, <a href="https://www.tmz.com/2024/03/04/kate-middleton-seen-spotted-public-first-time-mystery-hospitalization/">TMZ published</a> a grainy photo of Catherine in the passenger seat of a car near Windsor Castle. She wears large, dark glasses in the long-distance shot. It could be anyone, internet sleuths point out. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1764827518471741834"}"></div></p>
<p>Significantly, no major UK news outlets published the photo, as per <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/05/world/europe/princess-kate-middleton-royals.html">Kensington Palace’s request</a>. This is partly driven by a desire to preserve access to the Palace in the long term. UK news outlets are also constrained by the <a href="https://www.ipso.co.uk/editors-code-of-practice/">Editor’s Code of Practice</a> and the UK’s right-to-privacy legislation, <a href="https://theconversation.com/does-the-royal-family-have-a-right-to-privacy-what-the-law-says-224881">which applies to the royal family</a>. Nonetheless, the snap was widely circulated online.</p>
<p>The situation escalated further when Catherine shared a photo of her and her children <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C4U_IqTNaqU/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==">on Instagram</a> in honour of Mother’s Day. The public quickly realised the image was at best poorly photoshopped or at worst AI-generated. Online sleuths identified strangely shaped and misplaced hands, odd shadows and unseasonal plant life. </p>
<p>The Associated Press, Getty Images, AFP and Reuters subsequently <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-68526972">issued “kill notices” on the image</a>, stating concerns it had been digitally manipulated. In response, Kensington Palace released a <a href="https://twitter.com/KensingtonRoyal/status/1767135566645092616?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">brief statement from Catherine</a>, who explained that as an amateur photographer she likes to “occasionally experiment with editing”. The photo had previously been attributed to the Prince of Wales. </p>
<h2>Old media PR won’t work in a new media world</h2>
<p>The situation with Catherine’s absence from public life exposes the limits of old media strategies in a “new media” world. </p>
<p>The Palace is used to being able to control media coverage through the <a href="https://newsmediauk.org/industry-services/royal-rota/">royal rota</a>, a select group of press outlets in the UK given access to royal events. It typically doesn’t comment on the record in response to gossip and speculation. Yet the interest in Catherine’s health has prompted a <a href="https://www.etonline.com/palace-responds-to-theories-about-kate-middletons-health-and-whereabouts-220728">number</a> of <a href="https://x.com/KensingtonRoyal/status/1751938452721996034?s=20">statements</a> to the <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/royals/26254336/prince-william-return-work-thanksgiving-service/">press</a>. </p>
<p>These old media strategies don’t seem to be working, with news outlets that are part of the <a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/kate-middleton-photo-given-kill-32320496">royal rota reporting critically</a> on the manipulated image. </p>
<p>In a world increasingly plagued by synthetic and AI-generated images, it seems the Palace releasing a digitally manipulated image has also undermined the public’s trust in it, adding fuel to the fire. </p>
<p>The public has become increasingly sensitised to <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/rabbit-holes/the-uncanny-failures-of-ai-generated-hands">AI-generated images</a> over the past year, and is generally much more sceptical and switched on. At the same time, the release of the first post-surgery image of Catherine was always going to attract scrutiny online. It seems the Palace was unprepared for this. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/yes-kate-middletons-photo-was-doctored-but-so-are-a-lot-of-images-we-see-today-225553">Yes, Kate Middleton's photo was doctored. But so are a lot of images we see today</a>
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<p>Most social media users also treat royal rumours similarly to other types of viral celebrity gossip and <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-power-and-pleasure-and-occasional-backlash-of-celebrity-conspiracy-theories-221754">conspiracy</a> <a href="https://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/2871">theorising</a>, and evidence suggests the royal family’s popularity is <a href="https://time.com/6276478/british-monarchy-popularity-explained/">declining over time</a>. </p>
<p>Chaotic, fast-paced social media platforms such as X and TikTok are breeding grounds for misinformation – and #KateGate is arguably the first time the Palace has felt the full force of new-age online conspiracy.</p>
<p>Recent events demonstrate the Palace can no longer rely on favoured newspapers avoiding tricky topics. Now, everyone online can act as a reporter – and a sleuth – and the Palace will need to be much more forthcoming if it wants to preserve its image. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-power-and-pleasure-and-occasional-backlash-of-celebrity-conspiracy-theories-221754">The power and pleasure – and occasional backlash – of celebrity conspiracy theories</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225562/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Rumours are out of control following the Kate Middleton photo controversy. It seems the royal family’s PR train is running off its rails.Naomi Smith, Lecturer in Sociology, University of the Sunshine CoastAmy Clarke, Senior Lecturer in History specialising in architectural heritage and material culture, University of the Sunshine CoastLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2255212024-03-12T13:29:49Z2024-03-12T13:29:49ZPrincess of Wales photo controversy shows we’ve been thinking about edited images the wrong way<p>The spread of deepfake videos, digitally altered photos and images produced by artifical intelligence threaten our ability to discern truth from fiction. Experts have warned of a coming <a href="https://www.wired.co.uk/article/virtual-briefing-deepfakes-nina-schick">“infocalypse”</a>, and of the consequences for this year’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/23/ai-deepfakes-come-of-age-as-billions-prepare-to-vote-in-a-bumper-year-of-elections">bumper crop of elections</a>. </p>
<p>Yet the biggest story about photographic manipulation so far in 2024 is that the Princess of Wales manually <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68534359">edited a family portrait</a>. The image was released by Kensington Palace on Mother’s Day to reassure the public about her health. </p>
<p>After noticing signs that the picture was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/mar/11/the-sleeve-the-hand-the-knee-the-royal-photos-telltale-signs-of-editing">edited</a>, press agencies issued “kill notices” instructing all papers to withdraw the image. This led to more speculation, and an apology from Catherine on X (formerly Twitter) conceding that she does “occasionally experiment with editing”.</p>
<p>The response to this controversy can help us think about the wider challenge of manipulated images and video. In my view, we shouldn’t think of edited photos as a harbinger of disaster spurred by new technology. Rather, they are merely the most recent stage in a long social problem of fakery that we have been navigating for decades.</p>
<h2>A royal history of faked photographs</h2>
<p>Catherine is not the first British royal to experiment with photography. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were early enthusiasts, first sitting for <a href="https://www.rct.uk/collection/themes/exhibitions/crown-and-camera-the-british-royal-family-and-photography-1842-1910-1/the-royal-image-and-commercial-photography">photographs in the 1840s</a>. During this time, composite images – which combine multiple exposures into one image – were widespread, owing to the limitations of photographic technology. </p>
<p>Early photographers in the <a href="https://www.theartstory.org/movement/pictorialism/">pictorialist movement</a>, explored the artistic possibilities of photographic manipulation, valuing photography as an art form more than as a medium of documentary.</p>
<p>Some of these composite photographs, such as Henry Peach Robinson’s image Fading Away, were controversial, because of both their subject matter and technique. They were seen as undermining the reliability of the medium. Victoria and Albert took the side of pictorialist photographers, purchasing copies of composite images by Robinson, <a href="https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/person/103KER">Oscar Gustave Rejlander</a> and others. </p>
<p>Portrait photographers employed similar techniques. There are several <a href="https://www.rct.uk/collection/2907350/queen-victoria-is-presented-with-a-book">composite</a> <a href="https://www.rct.uk/collection/2913355/double-portrait-of-princess-victoria-of-wales-1868-1935">portraits</a> of the royal family from around this time. Given the prevalence of these techniques, it’s likely that many group shots of the royals in the 19th century are composites.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A black and white composite photo, showing a young woman lying sickly while another young woman stands behind her, and an older woman sits in a chair facing her. A silhouette of a man looks out the window. All are in Victorian-era clothing." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581300/original/file-20240312-28-fz8013.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581300/original/file-20240312-28-fz8013.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581300/original/file-20240312-28-fz8013.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581300/original/file-20240312-28-fz8013.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581300/original/file-20240312-28-fz8013.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581300/original/file-20240312-28-fz8013.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581300/original/file-20240312-28-fz8013.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Henry Peach Robinson’s image Fading Away is an example of the widespread use of composite photography.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=523722">Henry Peach Robinson</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Journalism at this time was not exempt from image manipulation. Before it became possible to directly print photographs in newspapers in 1880, there was a widespread practice of copying photographs into drawings, embellishing them by adding colour and improving the composition. </p>
<p>This wouldn’t have been seen as at all unusual in an era in which many photography studios employed painters to touch up portraits. When half-tone printing was introduced, journalists continued to tweak their photographs, with one editor of a photography magazine in 1898 boldly stating that <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17514517.2017.1322397">“everybody fakes”</a>. </p>
<p>This practice was eventually stopped not by technological innovation, but by the development of social norms. <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17514517.2017.1322397">“Faking”</a> shifted from being an accepted technique to a term of criticism, and photojournalists staked their reputation on not faking their images.</p>
<h2>Solving a social problem</h2>
<p>Deepfakes and manipulated photos are often discussed as a purely technological problem. The popular suggestion is that more tech – a piece of software or watermark – is needed to identify problematic images. As the fallout from the latest royal family portrait reminds us, producing and disseminating accurate and properly contextualised images is fundamentally about ensuring well-placed trust in competent sources.</p>
<p>Outside of journalistic contexts, we don’t have strong social norms against adding colour to photographs. New phones are sold touting their ability to automatically <a href="https://www.theverge.com/23924382/how-to-best-take-google-photos-pixel-8-pro-face-swap">edit together photographs</a>. Catherine appears to have carried out the kind of editing on this picture which would be commonplace on photographs shared on Instagram or the family group chat.</p>
<p>The problem here isn’t that photo editing software fundamentally undermines our trust in photographs. The problem is that the British royal family – in particular its press operation – has failed to live up to the standards we would expect from a public organisation. But the fact that we have those standards, and press organisations were able to respond accordingly, shows we have the tools to manage this problem.</p>
<p>We should not be panicking about manipulated images undermining the institutions that sift truth from falsehood. Nor should we be complacent because this faked image was quickly discovered. </p>
<p>Journalists have always had to contend with manipulated media. But this is a social, not just a technological, problem. Rather than looking to tech or AI solutions to manipulated images, the historical record suggests that what’s needed is to put more funding into human journalists, including experts in photographic manipulation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225521/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joshua Habgood-Coote has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 818633).</span></em></p>Catherine is far from the first royal to experiment with photo editing.Joshua Habgood-Coote, Research Fellow in Philosophy, University of LeedsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2255532024-03-12T03:25:40Z2024-03-12T03:25:40ZYes, Kate Middleton’s photo was doctored. But so are a lot of images we see today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581154/original/file-20240312-26-tb4sa3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=425%2C221%2C2598%2C1694&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Conversation/Instagram/X</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Rumours and conspiracies have been <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/28/style/princess-kate-middleton-health.html">swirling</a> following the abdominal surgery and long recovery period of Catherine, Princess of Wales, earlier this year. They intensified on Monday when Kensington Palace released a photo of the princess with her three children.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/C4U_IqTNaqU","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<p>The photo had clear signs of tampering, and international wire services <a href="https://apnews.com/article/kate-princess-photo-surgery-ca91acf667c87c6c70a7838347d6d4fb">withdrew the image</a> amid concerns around manipulation. The princess later <a href="https://twitter.com/KensingtonRoyal/status/1767135566645092616">apologised for any confusion</a> and said she had “experimented with editing” as many amateur photographers do.</p>
<p>Image editing is extremely common these days, and not all of it is for nefarious purposes. However, in an age of rampant misinformation, how can we stay vigilant around suspicious images?</p>
<h2>What happened with the royal photo?</h2>
<p>A close look reveals at least eight inconsistencies with the image. </p>
<p>Two of these relate to unnatural blur. Catherine’s right hand is unnaturally blurred, even though her left hand is sharp and at the same distance from the camera. The left side of Catherine’s hair is also unnaturally blurred, while the right side of her hair is sharp.</p>
<p>These types of edits are usually made with a blur tool that softens pixels. It is often used to make the background of an image less distracting or to smooth rough patches of texture.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581145/original/file-20240312-26-rhmkk1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581145/original/file-20240312-26-rhmkk1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581145/original/file-20240312-26-rhmkk1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=358&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581145/original/file-20240312-26-rhmkk1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=358&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581145/original/file-20240312-26-rhmkk1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=358&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581145/original/file-20240312-26-rhmkk1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581145/original/file-20240312-26-rhmkk1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581145/original/file-20240312-26-rhmkk1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">At least eight logical inconsistencies exist in the doctored image the Prince and Princess of Wales posted on social media.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C4U_IqTNaqU/">Photo by the Prince of Wales/Chart by T.J. Thomson</a></span>
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<p>Five of the edits appear to use the “clone stamp” tool. This is a Photoshop tool that takes part of the same or a different image and “stamps” it onto another part.</p>
<p>You can see this with the repeated pattern on Louis’s (on the left) sweater and the tile on the ground. You can also see it with the step behind Louis’s legs and on Charlotte’s hair and sleeve. The zipper on Catherine’s jacket also doesn’t line up.</p>
<p>The most charitable interpretation is that the princess was trying to remove distracting or unflattering elements. But the artefacts could also point to multiple images being blended together. This could either be to try to show the best version of each person (for example, with a smiling face and open eyes), or for another purpose.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1767135566645092616"}"></div></p>
<h2>How common are image edits?</h2>
<p>Image editing is increasingly common as both photography and editing are increasingly becoming more automated.</p>
<p>This sometimes happens without you even knowing.</p>
<p>Take HDR (high dynamic range) images, for example. Point your iPhone or equivalent at a beautiful sunset and watch it capture the scene from the brightest highlights to the darkest shadows. What happens here is your camera makes multiple images and automatically stitches them together to make an image <a href="https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/photography/hub/guides/what-is-hdr-photography.html">with a wider range of contrast</a>.</p>
<p>While face-smoothing or teeth-whitening filters are nothing new, some smartphone camera apps apply them without being prompted. Newer technology like Google’s “Best Take” <a href="https://blog.google/products/photos/how-google-photos-best-take-works/">feature</a> can even combine the best attributes of multiple images to ensure everyone’s eyes are open and faces are smiling in group shots.</p>
<p>On social media, it seems everyone tries to show themselves in their best light, which is partially why so few of the photos on our <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15551393.2020.1862663">camera rolls</a> make it onto our social media feeds. It is also why we often edit our photos to show our best sides.</p>
<p>But in other contexts, such as press photography, the <a href="https://www.ap.org/about/news-values-and-principles/telling-the-story/visuals">rules are much stricter</a>. The Associated Press, for example, bans all edits beyond simple crops, colour adjustments, and “minor adjustments” that “restore the authentic nature of the photograph”.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/three-images-that-show-wartime-photographs-can-have-greater-impact-than-the-written-word-216508">Three images that show wartime photographs can have greater impact than the written word</a>
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<p>Professional photojournalists haven’t always gotten it right, though. While the majority of lens-based news workers adhere to ethical guidelines like those published by the <a href="https://nppa.org/resources/code-ethics">National Press Photographers Association</a>, others have let deadline pressures, competition and the desire for exceptional imagery cloud their judgement.</p>
<p>One such example was in 2017, when British photojournalist Souvid Datta admitted to <a href="https://time.com/4766312/souvid-datta/">visually plagiarising</a> another photographer’s work within his own composition. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"859824132258537472"}"></div></p>
<p>Concerns around false or misleading visual information are at an all-time high, given advances in <a href="https://theconversation.com/nine-was-slammed-for-ai-editing-a-victorian-mps-dress-how-can-news-media-use-ai-responsibly-222382">generative artificial intelligence (AI)</a>. In fact, this year the World Economic Forum named the risk of misinformation and disinformation as the world’s greatest <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2024/01/ai-disinformation-global-risks/">short-term threat</a>. It placed this above armed conflict and natural disasters.</p>
<h2>What to do if you’re unsure about an image you’ve found online</h2>
<p>It can be hard to keep up with the more than <a href="https://theconversation.com/3-2-billion-images-and-720-000-hours-of-video-are-shared-online-daily-can-you-sort-real-from-fake-148630">3 billion photos</a> that are shared each day.</p>
<p>But, for the ones that matter, we owe it to ourselves to slow down, zoom in and ask ourselves a few simple <a href="https://www.aap.com.au/factcheck-resources/how-we-check-the-facts/">questions</a>:</p>
<p>1. Who made or shared the image? This can give clues about reliability and the purpose of making or sharing the image.</p>
<p>2. What’s the evidence? Can you find another version of the image, for example, using a <a href="https://tineye.com/">reverse-image search engine</a>?</p>
<p>3. What do trusted sources say? Consult resources like <a href="https://www.aap.com.au/factcheck/">AAP FactCheck</a> or <a href="https://factcheck.afp.com/">AFP Fact Check</a> to see if authoritative sources have already weighed in.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/deepfakes-how-to-empower-youth-to-fight-the-threat-of-misinformation-and-disinformation-221171">Deepfakes: How to empower youth to fight the threat of misinformation and disinformation</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225553/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>T.J. Thomson receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is an affiliate with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making & Society. Thomson collaborated with the Australian Associated Press in 2021 to produce fact-checking resources for its "Check the Facts" campaign.</span></em></p>The Princess of Wales is caught in a social media storm after the release of a clearly edited photo. But image editing is increasingly common, and your phone can even do it without you knowing.T.J. Thomson, Senior Lecturer in Visual Communication & Digital Media, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/659882016-09-26T11:26:12Z2016-09-26T11:26:12ZWilliam and Kate – and Canada’s complex relationship with the crown<p>Canada is hosting a visit from the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and the first few days of the trip have proven to be a huge pictorial success. The photogenic royals and their equally glamorous hosts, prime minister Justin Trudeau and his wife Sophie, have provided the world’s press with plenty to splash over the weekend newspapers and bulletins. But, pretty pictures aside, this trip is prompting some interesting constitutional questions. </p>
<p>This isn’t just a visit from the British royal family – Queen Elizabeth II is queen of Canada and, as such, Kate and William are part of the Canadian royal family. Under Canada’s quite separate constitutional law, this is an institution differentiated from the British monarchy. </p>
<p>As with Australia – which has had a well-documented debate on the merits of republicanism versus monarchism – Canada’s relationship with the crown is complex. <a href="http://www.utppublishing.com/The-Invisible-Crown-The-First-Principle-of-Canadian-Government.html">Many have argued</a> that the politics of Canadian monarchism are not properly understood – and <a href="http://poll.forumresearch.com/post/289/majority-dont-want-prince-charles-as-head-of-state/">a 2015 poll</a> found that while less than half (39%) of respondents wanted to abolish the monarchy, nearly three-quarters (73%) believed the head of state should be born and/or live in Canada. The queen is considered Canadian according to law, but this doesn’t change the fact that she’s primarily the British monarch. <a href="https://www.royal.uk/canada">The official royal website</a> reads:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Canada has been a monarchy for centuries – first under the kings of France in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, then under the British Crown in the 18th and 19th centuries, and now as a kingdom in her own right … The territories which now form Canada came under British power at various times by settlement, war or cession.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The blasé and uncritical phrasing completely overlooks the history of colonialism. It might now be a “kingdom in its own right” but what does it mean when this kingdom’s head of state is a white, British woman? If these territories were ruled by Britain “by settlement, war or cession” what are the politics of retaining an Anglo-Canadian monarchy?</p>
<p>Further colonial memories are evoked with William and Kate’s trip. Their itinerary includes visits to groups such as Heiltsuk First Nations: a community of tribal groups in British Columbia. However, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/23/william-kate-duke-duchess-cambridge-urged-confront-colonial-wrongs-canada?CMP=share_btn_tw">as critics have pointed out</a>, this visit fails to acknowledge a violent colonial history between the crown and these communities – the consequences of which are still being felt today. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/16/canada-first-nations-suicide-crisis-attawapiskat-history">Broken promises</a> made to the communities during treaties has led to widespread poverty, homelessness, disease, violence against women and a massively inflated suicide rate. These communities have been protesting against <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/06/07/canada-water-crisis-puts-first-nations-families-risk">alleged abuses of indigenous treaty rights</a> by the Canadian government, as well as organising an <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/aboriginal-day-of-action-unfolds-peacefully-1.638605">Aboriginal Day of Action in 2007</a> aimed at ending First Nations poverty. </p>
<h2>Regretful past</h2>
<p>What role are popular culture heroes William and Kate playing in this history then? <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/23/william-kate-duke-duchess-cambridge-urged-confront-colonial-wrongs-canada?CMP=share_btn_tw">Some have suggested</a> they will be “confronted” by the horrors of Britain’s colonial past – but to what extent will they actually face up to the realities of empire? </p>
<p>They are to be greeted by Heiltsuk First Nations with a welcome celebration, where we’ll no doubt be treated to more images of royals getting “involved” with traditional culture by standing by in Western dress watching natives dance around them, perhaps being <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/tuvalu/9549814/Duke-and-Duchess-carried-on-thrones-in-Tuvalu.html">carried on homemade thrones</a> like they were in Tuvalu in 2012.</p>
<p>If they do acknowledge the history of the region, it’s incredibly unlikely that this will include an apology or even a recognition of Britain’s involvement. In 2011 the queen made a well-publicised “apology” to Ireland, but all this apology entailed <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/may/18/queen-ireland-apology-britains-actions">was her saying</a> that “with the benefit of historical hindsight we can all see things which we wish had been done differently, or not at all”. That’s more a commentary than anything else. </p>
<p>In 2012, Prince Harry was due to visit Jamaica when the prime minister, Portia Simpson Miller, invited Britain to apologise for the “wicked and brutal” slave trade. She further suggested Jamaica would be looking to replace Elizabeth II as head of state. Upon Harry’s arrival, all controversy appeared to have been forgotten. Harry and Simpson Miller <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/prince-harry/9127123/Prince-Harry-meets-Jamaican-prime-minister-Portia-Simpson-Miller.html">hugged, kissed and held hands</a> for an official photocall and there was no sniff of an apology for the duration of the trip. </p>
<p>If Britain’s former colonial possessions are happy enough to go along for the ride on these royal visits – as they mostly appear to be – then there is little pressure for an apology, which suits the royals just fine.</p>
<h2>Question of sovereignty</h2>
<p>As far as I can find, there is no official protocol for these royal “apologies”. The monarchy’s relationship with decolonised territories is strange and varied. The Commonwealth still has <a href="https://theconversation.com/who-told-prince-charles-he-could-be-head-of-the-commonwealth-51271">many troubling relations to empire</a> which don’t perhaps attract the attention they might. The queen herself has never attended an independence ceremony upon decolonisation, but always sends a royal representative – an odd procedure when the monarchy is the very institution the territory is distancing itself from. </p>
<p>But this raises interesting questions about the constitutional role of the monarchy today. At the time of historical settlement and war in Canada, the British monarchy was absolute – and solely responsible for the development of treaties and law. Now the relationship is constitutional, how is the British government implicated in this history? We know that the British government reviews – and sometimes even composes – all of the queen’s speeches except her Christmas speech. If she had ever apologised for colonial misdeeds, this would have been with the express permission of the British government. How does the British constitution function – and who really controls the crown as an institution: the queen or Theresa May? </p>
<p>Even though her role as queen of Canada is independent of her British sovereignty, this Canadian visit raises interesting questions about remnants of colonial rule in modern states. If William and Kate should apologise for violent histories, what are the implications for Canada’s royal family? Will the Canadian monarchy be abolished upon the queen’s death? How does British constitutionalism function alongside the queen’s other sovereignties? </p>
<p>They may try and distract us with cute photographs of the royal grandchildren, George and Charlotte, but these are the questions that need to be asked.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65988/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Laura Clancy receives funding from the ESRC and the AHRC.</span></em></p>The royal visit to Canada raises some important constitutional questions.Laura Clancy, PhD Candidate, Lancaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/408092015-05-02T19:12:15Z2015-05-02T19:12:15ZBaby’s first photo call: how the royals learned to act normal<p>After a day of waiting, the world’s press got their first look, and first photographs, of the newest member of the royal family at around 6pm on May 2. The picture of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge standing outside the hospital doors, new baby in Kate’s arms, will be one of the defining images of the year.</p>
<p>The young parents may well have been relieved by the lower level of frenzy that has surrounded the birth of their second child. For one thing, it probably made the whole experience a lot easier to deal with. But for another, it helps William and Kate cement their status as the most “normal” royals in the palace.</p>
<p>Taken literally, the royal family is, just that – a family, albeit with a dynasty spanning thousands of years. But the idea of the monarch and their relatives as an exemplary, model unit has been a key aspect of royal family PR for more than 100 years.</p>
<h2>The road to normal</h2>
<p>The value of presenting the royals as ordinary people was first recognised during Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s reign in the 19th century. The couple’s down-to-earth attitude and strict standards of personal morality made them icons of Victorian values. And the marriage of their nine children into various European royal dynasties earned Victoria the nickname “the Grandmother of Europe”.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79368/original/image-20150426-14581-1f9avez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79368/original/image-20150426-14581-1f9avez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79368/original/image-20150426-14581-1f9avez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79368/original/image-20150426-14581-1f9avez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79368/original/image-20150426-14581-1f9avez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79368/original/image-20150426-14581-1f9avez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79368/original/image-20150426-14581-1f9avez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Victoria and Albert, waiting for a takeaway.</span>
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<p>Around 100 years later, during World War II, King George VI’s two daughters, Princess Elizabeth (now Queen Elizabeth II) and Princess Margaret, were used by the government as an emblem of national loyalty and wartime stoicism.</p>
<p>Their apparent steadfastness in the face of wartime threats and sacrifices was illustrated by photographs of the young girls in a variety of relaxed, carefree poses. These were aimed at reassuring the public of their collective safety – even if the pair were generally positioned in front of unidentifiable backdrops to shield their location from potential attacks.</p>
<p>The national affection for the family, and in particular for Princess Elizabeth, never waned, and her accession in 1952 when she was already a mother to two young children – Charles and Anne – was a popular move.</p>
<p>The decline of the British Empire and the rise of the Commonwealth placed the new queen at the apex of a worldwide, multicultural family, and so it followed that she must exhibit comfort and contentment with her “normal” family life.</p>
<p>This idea of normality became central to the workings of the royal institution and the monarchy was pushed to embrace the popularity of television and the illusion of intimacy this promoted.</p>
<p>In 1969 the family featured in the first royal <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNgO31HUiFM">fly-on-the-wall documentary</a>, which showed them cooking a barbecue together at Balmoral. The Queen prepared salad while Charles and Anne grilled sausages. The documentary was hugely popular at the time, even if it is now <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1346984/The-home-movie-doesnt-want-Why-Queen-STILL-keeping-wraps-fly-wall-film-changed-view-Royals.html">embargoed by the Queen</a>.</p>
<h2>21st century normal</h2>
<p>This iconography of family values is now best embodied by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. After the birth of Prince George in 2013, they were pictured sitting on the grass in the Middleton family garden, along with their dog Lupo, mirroring the pose of the Queen’s family 53 years earlier. No doubt with baby Cambridge number two, a similar shot will be produced.</p>
<p>This is partly just a reflection of celebrity culture in general, where public relations are enhanced through carefully managed and structured intimacy. The royal family is, after all, an institution like any other, with <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04xtmvf">press relations officers and spin doctors aplenty</a>.</p>
<p>But there is also more than a hint of class disguise at play when William and Kate spread out on the lawn. As <a href="http://www.bookdepository.com/Talking-Royal-Family-Professor-Michael-Billig/9780203314067">Michael Billig</a> wrote, this performance of ordinary is part of “an ideological job of settlement” which staves off antipathy towards royal privilege from the lower classes. To maintain their popularity (and, ironically, their superiority), they have realised they must be relatable and in touch with everyday values.</p>
<p>This has been perfected by <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/28/comment-royal-baby-kate-william">yummy mummy Kate and everyman William</a>, who have successfully embodied what looks to all intents and purposes like an upper middle-class lifestyle – despite the vast hereditary wealth and hundreds of staff at their disposal. The very image of the couple on the grass with baby George is carefully choreographed to match the middle-class ideal, right down to being taken in the Middleton family garden, and there’s certainly no opulent palace towering behind them.</p>
<p>Likewise, seeing William emerge from a hospital wing carrying his new child in a car seat, before driving her and his wife back home himself, mirrors the experience of many young fathers, even if the gaggle of press watching his every move (and the helicopter tracking his car) does not.</p>
<h2>The trouble with normal</h2>
<p>But as the real middle class is being squeezed ever tighter by <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-simple-win-win-case-for-higher-wages-in-britain-37074">stagnant wages</a>, the rising cost of living and low employment rates, is it helpful to have Kate and William, whose second home <a href="http://www.theweek.co.uk/59880/anmer-hall-inside-william-and-kates-country-home">Amner Hall</a> cost the taxpayer millions to refurbish, as the pin-ups of upper middle-class aspirations?</p>
<p>These images are essentially propaganda. They mask William and Kate’s class privilege and hereditary wealth, and most importantly, their constitutional and institutional power.</p>
<p>The monarchy may not be politically powerful in any traditional sense, but it is still extraordinarily socially, culturally and economically powerful. And in an age in which <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/apr/26/crisis-what-crisis-britains-richest-double-their-wealth-in-10-years">inequality is rising beyond recognition</a>, masking this power is particularly dangerous. It normalises upper-class lifestyles, luxury consumption and hierarchical class structure. It makes colossal wealth inequality into a natural fact of life, and intensifies the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/09/children-uk-victorian-conditions-inequality-child-poverty">contemporary stigma</a> attached to the working classes. </p>
<p>As the whole world melts into a typically <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/royal-baby-the-most-tenuous-pr-campaigns-surrounding-the-birth-of-the-spare-heir-10195513.html?dkdk">sycophantic puddle</a> over Kate and William’s daughter, we need to start addressing the mythology that surrounds the couple. We shouldn’t forget that the monarchy is an institution – and a powerful one at that.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/40809/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Laura Clancy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>How the royal propaganda machine tries to make hereditary millionaires seem just like the rest of us.Laura Clancy, PhD Student, Lancaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/408122015-05-02T12:08:11Z2015-05-02T12:08:11ZRoyal baby: it’s a girl! And thank heavens she wasn’t born in 1516<p>A new member of the British royal family has been born, in the form of a daughter to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.</p>
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<p>The royals have received warm congratulations from the prime minister, deputy prime minister and the leaders of the opposition parties.</p>
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<p>But the birth of an English princess has not always been a cause for celebration. In February 1516 the Venetian ambassador congratulated Henry VIII upon his daughter’s birth, remarking that “the state would have been yet more pleased had the child been a son.” Henry replied that “if it was a daughter this time, by the grace of God the sons will follow.”</p>
<h2>Cast out</h2>
<p>In centuries past, an English princess was a valuable prize on the royal marriage market. Royal women were expected to secure marriages with foreign princes in order to create diplomatic links with other kingdoms. These marriages helped cement the power of the monarchy on the European stage. </p>
<p>Royal women might also marry into the English nobility, creating blood ties between the monarch and his most powerful courtiers. But these unions were also subject to the changing political fortunes of the time.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79501/original/image-20150427-18138-1gfz9fa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79501/original/image-20150427-18138-1gfz9fa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=663&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79501/original/image-20150427-18138-1gfz9fa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=663&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79501/original/image-20150427-18138-1gfz9fa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=663&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79501/original/image-20150427-18138-1gfz9fa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=833&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79501/original/image-20150427-18138-1gfz9fa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=833&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79501/original/image-20150427-18138-1gfz9fa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=833&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A drawing of the young Joan of England.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:JoanEngland.jpg">Wikipedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some unions were doomed never to take place. <a href="http://historyofengland.typepad.com/blog/2013/10/107-the-death-of-joan.html">Princess Joan</a> was only 14 when she died of plague in 1348 en route to her wedding in Castile.</p>
<p>Still, other princesses were destined for a happier fate. </p>
<p>Princess Mary was married to the ageing Louis XII in 1514. He died just a few months later, apparently worn out by his exertions in the bedchamber. The widowed Mary defied her king and <a href="http://englishhistory.net/tudor/relative/charles-brandon-mary-tudor/">secretly married the Duke of Suffolk</a> when he arrived in France to accompany her home. It was a rare example of a royal princess who was able to marry for love.</p>
<p>Still other princesses never married and were dedicated to a religious life. <a href="http://englishhistoryauthors.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/inconvenient-woman.html">Princess Bridget</a> was sent to Dartford Priory in Kent to become a nun in around 1487.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79485/original/image-20150427-18170-1c3ggnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79485/original/image-20150427-18170-1c3ggnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=780&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79485/original/image-20150427-18170-1c3ggnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=780&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79485/original/image-20150427-18170-1c3ggnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=780&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79485/original/image-20150427-18170-1c3ggnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=980&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79485/original/image-20150427-18170-1c3ggnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=980&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79485/original/image-20150427-18170-1c3ggnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=980&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Princess Mary Tudor.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/60861613@N00/6813430647/sizes/l">lisby1</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Despite their royal blood, the daughters of a king were not, in the past, expected to sit upon the throne in their own right.</p>
<p>It was believed that women by their nature were unfit to exercise power; God, it was argued, had created women to be under obedience to men. Henry VIII firmly believed the wisdom of his age, and famously married six times in his quest to secure a male heir.</p>
<p>His daughters Mary and Elizabeth eventually ascended to their father’s throne and became the first ruling queens of England. Both came to the throne with popular support, but they also faced uphill battles to establish themselves as female rulers.</p>
<p>The institution of monarchy in England was gendered male, from the language of royal business to the coronation ritual itself, which involved 15 knights of the bath plunging naked into a tub and receiving a kiss on the shoulder from the king. Mary I was forced to reassure her subjects that her sovereignty would not be threatened when she married Prince Philip of Spain – whereas Elizabeth I famously refused to take a husband throughout her long reign.</p>
<h2>Equal footing</h2>
<p>Since the 16th century, England has been ruled by a number of queens. Two of them, Elizabeth I and Victoria, have given their names to golden ages.</p>
<p>Despite all this progress, princesses have only recently assumed an equal footing with their brothers in one important aspect of royal life: it was not until a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15492607">landmark ruling in 2011</a> that the eldest child of the monarch was ruled to take precedence in the succession regardless of their sex.</p>
<p>The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s as-yet-unnamed daughter becomes fourth in line to the throne, bumping her uncle, Prince Harry, down into fifth place. </p>
<p>The birth of Prince George in 2013 means that England will see at least three future generations of kings. But even if this baby never makes it to the throne, the birth of an English princess is at least a cause for celebration these days.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/40812/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lynsey Wood does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The life of a princess has traditionally not been pleasant.Lynsey Wood, PhD Student, Associate Lecturer, Lancaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/393702015-03-26T03:21:27Z2015-03-26T03:21:27ZPower to the princesses: Australia wraps up succession law changes<p>A small blow was struck for women on Thursday. At 11am, laws came into effect across the Queen’s Realms to change the rules of succession to the throne, with retrospective application back to 2011. Males are no longer favoured over females, so that an older sister will become sovereign ahead of her younger brother. </p>
<p>In a further blow to long-entrenched discrimination, a person will not lose his or her right to succession to the throne for marrying a Catholic.</p>
<p>This does not remove all discriminatory aspects of the rules of succession. Family and religion still play a critical role. A person can only be sovereign if he or she is a Protestant who is “in communion” with the Church of England, and can only inherit the throne if he or she is descended from Sophia, Electress of Hanover. That rules out most of us.</p>
<p>Most people probably thought that these changes were done and dusted after <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perth_Agreement">agreement was reached</a> in Perth in 2011 to implement them. However, <a href="http://www.royal.gov.uk/monarchandcommonwealth/queenandcommonwealth/whatisacommonwealthrealm.aspx">16 realms</a> have Queen Elizabeth II as their head of state. In addition to the United Kingdom, they include Australia, New Zealand and Canada, as well as a number of Caribbean and South Pacific countries.</p>
<p>Since 2011, a mammoth effort has been undertaken to ensure the rules of succession will be the same in each of these realms, so that in future the Crown remains held by the same monarch. Australia was the last realm to complete its legislation. As a consequence, on March 26 the changes to succession to the Crown across all the realms came into effect simultaneously at 11am Australian Eastern Daylight Time.</p>
<h2>Changing the rules, realm by realm</h2>
<p>In some of the realms, no action was needed. For example, the <a href="http://www.tuvaluislands.com/const_tuvalu.htm">constitution of Tuvalu</a> states that Queen Elizabeth II:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… having at the request of the people of Tuvalu graciously consented, is the Sovereign of Tuvalu and, in accordance with this Constitution, Head of State.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This vests the queen’s sovereignty in the choice of the people, rather than inheritance, colonial rule or “the grace of God”.</p>
<p>However, for the future, the constitution vests the power to make laws about succession to the Tuvaluan Crown in the Parliament of Tuvalu, but says that, in the meantime, whoever is the monarch of the United Kingdom is sovereign of Tuvalu. Having not legislated on the subject, the parliament has left this for the British to determine.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DWmAOjm0TVk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Other countries, such as Australia, Barbados, Canada, New Zealand, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, and St Vincent and the Grenadines, have passed legislation to give effect to the changes. The process was more difficult in Australia and Canada as they are both federations with entrenched constitutions.</p>
<p>Canada courted controversy by ignoring its provinces and seeking to avoid amending its constitution by asserting that whoever is queen of the United Kingdom is automatically queen of Canada. This has, unsurprisingly, <a href="http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/royal-succession-laws-challenged-in-bid-to-renew-constitutional-debate-1.1320560">led to litigation</a> and the possibility that the Canadian laws of succession will be out of kilter with those of other realms. </p>
<p>Australia took the more cautious approach of consulting the states and co-operating with them to achieve a constitutionally effective change. It used a fairly obscure constitutional provision, which allows the Commonwealth to legislate, at the request of all the states directly concerned, to do something that only the UK Parliament could have done at federation (that is, change the rules of succession to the throne).</p>
<p>Over the past two years, each state has enacted its own legislation, requesting the Commonwealth to enact the law to implement these changes. Western Australia was the last state to pass its <a href="http://www5.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/wa/consol_act/sttca2015269/">request Act</a> earlier this year and the Commonwealth has now <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/Bills_Search_Results/Result?bId=r5419">passed its law</a>. All of these laws are being brought into effect simultaneously across the realms.</p>
<h2>‘Tis still treason to violate the king’s unmarried daughter</h2>
<p>The exercise highlighted the relics of British law that remain part of Australian law. For example, the New South Wales request legislation gave effect to amendments to the <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/aep/Edw3Stat5/25/2/section/II">Treason Act of 1351</a>, which still applies as part of NSW law. Under that law, it is treason to “compass or imagine” the death of the king or his queen or their eldest son and heir, or to violate the queen or the eldest daughter of the king if she is unmarried. </p>
<p>No doubt the people of NSW will be most relieved to know that, as from March 26, it will also be treason to imagine the death of the king’s eldest daughter if she is his heir. But it will no longer be treason to violate the wife of the king’s eldest son unless he is the heir. Violation of the eldest daughter of the king remains treason as long as she is unmarried. </p>
<p>One of the few consequences of substance of this exercise in changing the rules of succession to the Crown is its effect upon marriages. Under the <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/apgb/Geo3/12/11/contents">Royal Marriages Act 1772</a>, the descendants of George II who failed to obtain the monarch’s permission prior to marrying had their marriage declared void.</p>
<p>This potentially applies now to many people, probably including some Australians, who have no idea that they need the monarch’s permission before they can marry. That Act has now been repealed and any marriages that would otherwise have been invalid for lack of royal permission will be validated. We can now all breathe easier.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/39370/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anne Twomey receives funding from the ARC and occasionally does consultancy work for governments. She provided some unpaid assistance to governments in relation to the legal changes necessary to implement the agreed new rules of succession to the throne. She is also an expert witness in the Canadian litigation concerning the changes to succession to the Crown.</span></em></p>The Crown has become a little less discriminatory with changes to the rules of succession – and descendants of George II who failed to get permission to wed need no longer fear their marriage is void.Anne Twomey, Professor of Constitutional Law, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/390382015-03-20T14:13:26Z2015-03-20T14:13:26ZWhy do Americans fawn over British royalty?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196577/original/file-20171127-2089-7z59j7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Britain's Prince Harry and his fiancee Meghan Markle appear on the grounds of Kensington Palace in London, Nov. 27, 2017.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Britain-Royal-Engagement/d7b5358a87eb49f78ef7b2bad9a61d05/10/0">AP Photo/Matt Dunham</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>After months of speculation, profiles and fawning coverage in U.S. media outlets, Prince Harry will finally marry American actress Meghan Markle on May 19.</p>
<p>But what’s with Americans’ fascination with the British monarchy in the first place? It might seem strange, given the nation’s decision to sever ties with George III in 1776. No royal family from any other nation has induced the same level of scrutiny or celebration. </p>
<p>It’s important to recognize that British royals have been eliciting similar responses on American shores for the last 150 years</p>
<p>In 1860, Prince Albert Edward (the future King Edward VII) staged a surprisingly successful American tour, during which he was <a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/A/bo5550062.html">mobbed by fans</a> in cities including Chicago, Albany and Detroit. In 1939, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth made similar headlines when they ate their <a href="http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/aboutfdr/pdfs/royal_picnicmenu.pdf">first hot dogs</a> in Hyde Park, New York, urged on by President Roosevelt and his wife, Eleanor. </p>
<p>And then there was the frenzy surrounding Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s visit to Washington in 1985. President Reagan may have mistakenly referred to Diana as “Princess David,” but no one will forget Diana’s turn on the dance floor with John Travolta.</p>
<p>Of course, there’s an element of pragmatism in the tradition of warm American receptions. After the American Revolution, the newly independent nation realized that it would need to maintain strong ties with the imperial motherland for diplomatic and security reasons; the War of 1812 proved to be the exception – rather than the rule – in 19th-century Anglo-American relations. This “special relationship” would only become more vital during World War II and the Cold War that followed. President Roosevelt invited George VI to that picnic in 1939 not only to exchange pleasantries, but to also telegraph British and American unity in the face of German belligerence.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75522/original/image-20150320-14633-1duvbom.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75522/original/image-20150320-14633-1duvbom.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75522/original/image-20150320-14633-1duvbom.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=317&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75522/original/image-20150320-14633-1duvbom.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=317&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75522/original/image-20150320-14633-1duvbom.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=317&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75522/original/image-20150320-14633-1duvbom.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75522/original/image-20150320-14633-1duvbom.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75522/original/image-20150320-14633-1duvbom.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In 1939, when King George VI and Queen Elizabeth dined on hot dogs at FDR’s Hyde Park retreat, the two nations sought to convey a message of unity to the Nazis.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.macleans.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/1490129801.jpg">The National Archives</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But the emotion on display during royal visits also suggests a deep affective tie. Although the American revolutionaries long ago rejected colonial government, there has always been a certain degree of ambivalence about the Crown. The colonists, after all, had felt an intense and personal relationship with George III, whom they regarded as distinct from the British Parliament, even as many came to question the concept of hereditary sovereignty. As late as 1775, Alexander Hamilton would defend George III in his <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=KKxCAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA9&lpg=PA9&dq=These+colonies+were+planted+and+settled+by+the+grants,+and+under+the+protection+of+English+kings%22+alexander+hamilton&source=bl&ots=1uUkZulOMR&sig=Hs-JCuJ8-q_Z7xlUUD9QUJtExA4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ndgLVfbuPKeX7QaU2YGoAg&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=These%20colonies%20were%20planted%20and%20settled%20by%20the%20grants%2C%20and%20under%20the%20protection%20of%20English%20kings%22%20alexander%20hamilton&f=false">The Farmer Refuted</a> on the grounds that George III was “king of America, by virtue of a compact between us and the kings of Great Britain.” As Hamilton went on to explain, “[T]o disclaim the authority of a British Parliament over us, does by no means imply the dereliction of our allegiance to British Monarchs.”</p>
<p>In the wake of the Revolution, the routines, symbols, rituals and attitudes associated with the Crown proved difficult to sacrifice. </p>
<p>These thorny aspects of the transition from colony to nation have been addressed in works by <a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/A/bo5550062.html">Elisa Tamarkin</a>, <a href="http://uncpress.unc.edu/browse/book_detail?title_id=1430">Brendan J McConville</a> and, most recently, Eric Nelson. In <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674735347">The Royalist Revolution</a>, Nelson even goes so far as to suggest, provocatively, that the nation’s founders crafted the American presidency with the image of a strong king in mind. Not everyone will buy Nelson’s thesis, but there’s no denying that Americans have made their own political dynasties: instead of the Windsors, we have the Kennedys, Bushes and Clintons.</p>
<p>Now – with one of their own as the bride – it may afford Americans a moment, however fleeting, to imagine themselves once again as royal subjects.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Editor’s note: This is an updated version of an article first published on March 20, 2015</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/39038/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Arianne Chernock does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It might seem strange, especially given the nation’s decision to sever ties with George III in 1776.Arianne Chernock, Associate Professor of History, Boston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/161542013-07-22T19:33:37Z2013-07-22T19:33:37ZIt’s a boy – but baby Cambridge deserves choices in life<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/27891/original/6kbvnjrq-1374555258.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Their child shouldn't be trapped in the role.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Andrew Matthews/PA Wire</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Not for the first time in our long lives, Prince Charles and I find ourselves on parallel tracks, our first grandchildren born within weeks of each other. I offer him my congratulations, and hope that the experience will be as delightful for him as it has been for me. </p>
<p>Our paths first ran parallel almost 50 years ago, when we went to Australia as teenage schoolboys in 1966. Charles was sent there to boarding school for a couple of terms, a formative experience, apparently – “If you want to develop character, go to Australia”, as he <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/in-depth/queensland-floods/prince-charles-says-being-called-a-pommy-bastard-in-australia-was-good-for-his-character/story-fn7iwx3v-1225995304245">put it recently</a>, going on to mention some of the character-building nicknames employed by his Australian schoolmates. </p>
<p>I encountered those same character-building opportunities (and nicknames) as a migrant from the UK – my family arrived just three weeks after Charles left. We went our separate ways after that, of course. He came up to Trinity College, Cambridge, had a memorable gig in Wales in 1969, and has now served his country and the Commonwealth for more than 40 years. I went to the Australian National University, Canberra, making the first of many choices that also turned out to lead - happily though much more slowly - to Cambridge and to Trinity College. </p>
<p>But the biggest difference is that in common with most of my generation, in countries such as Britain and Australia, I made choices about what to do with my life. Charles did not, to an exceptional extent. Important as his life’s work is, he did not have the opportunity to choose it, or to volunteer for it, in any meaningful sense. </p>
<p>We don’t know how conscious he has been of this lack of choice, but from the outside - from the perspective of someone who has had choices - his life looks like “a comfortable form of inherited imprisonment”, as one of his biographers <a href="http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20100343,00.html">described it</a> long ago.</p>
<p>This brings me to what puzzles me about reactions to the happy news about Charles’s grandson. It is the apparent indifference, on the part of everyone who expresses views on these matters - from the most <a href="http://www.norepublic.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4329&Itemid=1">loyal monarchists</a> all the way through to <a href="http://www.republic.org.uk/">staunch republicans</a> - to the fact that this child faces the same fate as his famous grandfather. Nobody seems to care about baby Cambridge’s views about whether he wants to be King of England.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/27623/original/wnh35zsy-1374063951.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/27623/original/wnh35zsy-1374063951.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/27623/original/wnh35zsy-1374063951.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/27623/original/wnh35zsy-1374063951.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/27623/original/wnh35zsy-1374063951.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/27623/original/wnh35zsy-1374063951.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/27623/original/wnh35zsy-1374063951.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Born to rule.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">YT Blue</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I <a href="http://theconversation.com/time-for-some-royal-prerogative-lets-give-kates-child-a-choice-11518">wrote about this</a> in The Conversation six months ago, when the initial news about Kate’s pregnancy bought some welcome cheer to a cold Cambridge winter. I pointed out how dismayed most of us we would be if the state decided to conscript <em>our</em> children for future public office - if the prime minister turned up on our doorstep, with the news that our child was going to be brought up to be Archbishop of Canterbury, or master of Trinity, or something equally splendid. But that’s precisely the situation facing baby Cambridge and his future siblings. The only difference is that the prime minister doesn’t need to make a house call – the entire nation just takes for granted that that’s the deal.</p>
<p>I asked whether this is acceptable. Does baby Cambridge really have fewer rights than all other children to be born in Britain over the next few years? If not, then we are simply not entitled to presume that he will wish to spend his life in our service, with all that that entails.</p>
<p>Since then, I’ve had some interesting feedback. Critics of my argument make two main points, the first neatly encapsulated in the words of one kind correspondent, who says that the “justification for hereditary monarchy is that it guarantees the continuity of the state”, and “the curtailment of freedom that being the heir to the throne involves is a price worth paying for the constitutional stability that a monarchical system secures”. </p>
<p>I have two responses to this. First, the evidence for the claim about continuity seems debatable, to say the least. Is Switzerland less stable than Sweden, say, or Austria than Belgium, or the US than Canada? (In each case, the first is a republic, the second a monarchy.) Second, I wasn’t proposing the abolition of the British monarchy (or of any of the handful of other modern democratic monarchies, in Europe or elsewhere). I was simply suggesting that it should be made fairer to the individuals on which it depends - at the very least, that the succession should be opt-in, rather than opt-out. (I suggested that eligible candidates should have the option of adding their names to a line of succession, and of removing them again, once they reach a certain age.) </p>
<p>So even if we were to grant - as I do not - that curtailment of the freedom of the heir would be a price worth paying for some modest increase in national stability, it is a completely unnecessary cost. With a little bit of thought, we could devise an efficient means of cleaning chimneys that didn’t involve children.</p>
<p>Some commentators seem to deny this, suggesting that the role of head of state in a system like Britain’s is so critical that we need to train people from childhood to do it. “A child likely to become the monarch needs a particular education/training for the role”, as one comment put it on my original piece. </p>
<p>I have two responses to this, too. First, if it were true that so much depended on the proper training of children then wouldn’t it make sense to choose the candidates a little more carefully - to screen them for intelligence, character, sociability, and the like, at six or seven years old, rather than relying on chance in such an important matter? More seriously, the idea that these constitutional tasks depend on childhood training is amply refuted by the long experience of countries such as Canada, New Zealand and Australia, where the roles are filled by governors-general, who are chosen for the job not on the basis of special childhood training but of distinguished contributions to public life. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/27622/original/yws6wbft-1374063698.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/27622/original/yws6wbft-1374063698.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/27622/original/yws6wbft-1374063698.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/27622/original/yws6wbft-1374063698.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/27622/original/yws6wbft-1374063698.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/27622/original/yws6wbft-1374063698.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/27622/original/yws6wbft-1374063698.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">No one doubts that Quentin Bryce is up to the job.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Government House, Canberra</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The present governor-general of Australia, for example, is Quentin Bryce, a grandmother of 10 herself, who, as her <a href="http://www.gg.gov.au/">official website</a> notes, “enjoyed a rich and distinguished career as an academic, lawyer, community and human rights advocate, senior public officer [and] university college principal”, before taking up the reins of state. Should Australians sleep less safely in their beds because Bryce was not trained from childhood for her vice-regal role? On the contrary, the experience of Australia, New Zealand and Canada shows how easy it would be to devise a grown-up monarchy for Britain, that didn’t depend on restricting the options of children and young adults. </p>
<p>It is easy to make fun of these attempts to rationalise what amounts to conscription for public office, but they reflect the deep and sincere affection that many people in Britain and the other modern monarchies feel for the institution, and for the families on which it depends. Unfortunately, affection for the institution, love of its traditions, is blinding these well-intentioned folk to the injustice to the very individuals on which the monarchy depends. </p>
<p>On the other side, those <a href="http://www.republic.org.uk/">republicans</a> who would prefer to abolish the monarchy altogether are so much in the grip of the idea that it represents an archaic form of privilege, that they, too, are blind to the injustice to the royal children themselves. </p>
<p>In my previous piece I predicted that as in cases like <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-23338279">gay marriage</a>, fair-minded people will soon agree that tradition needs to make way for simple justice. Some way will be found to make the monarchy less unfair. And it will probably survive, like marriage, more robust and popular than ever for dealing with the unfairness at the heart of its present version. </p>
<p>I pointed out that if we moved quickly, this change could be in place in time for the new baby Cambridge to benefit from it – before he goes to school, for example, and learns that his opportunities are different from those of other children. Hence my closing question, which I repeat here. Don’t we owe it to this welcome child to make this change, and to do it soon?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/16154/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Huw Price does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Not for the first time in our long lives, Prince Charles and I find ourselves on parallel tracks, our first grandchildren born within weeks of each other. I offer him my congratulations, and hope that…Huw Price, Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/115182013-01-28T19:38:00Z2013-01-28T19:38:00ZTime for some royal prerogative – let’s give Kate’s child a choice<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/19110/original/d9mnsvk9-1357790558.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Should William and Kate's baby get more options, or be stuck as the future monarch?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Tal Cohen</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s been a big winter here in Cambridge for fans of the Royal Family. First we had the Duke and Duchess themselves, Will and Kate, making their <a href="http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/National-News/Duke-speaks-of-Cambridge-pride-2-3031515.xnf">debut visit</a> to the city, bringing some welcome cheer to a grey week at the end of November. And then the happy news that there’s another little Cambridge on the way. It was enough to take the chill off an old republican heart like mine – at least one old enough, like <a href="http://media.smh.com.au/national/selections/prince-charles-opens-up-about-hopes-for-grandchild-3934594.html">Prince Charles’</a>, to have been charmed by the prospect of grandchildren of its own.</p>
<p>Some <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/editorials/with-kates-pregnancy-the-time-is-right-to-change-succession-rules/article5953199/">well-meaning commentators</a> have also been cheered, apparently, by the news that the royal succession is now to be gender-blind. Girl or boy, the new baby Cambridge will be third in line for the British and hence Australian throne, after Charles and William.</p>
<p>I hate to rain on such a well-meaning parade, but I have trouble making sense of this reaction. Presumably folk who regard this as a step forward are thinking that it removes a form of discrimination against girls. But what blinkered vision of equality could be troubled by this “discrimination” against girls, but not by the outright exclusion of all babies who don’t happen to be called Cambridge?</p>
<p>One step at a time, perhaps, but celebrating this change as a victory for equal rights for women, as the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15492607">BBC</a> put it, seems a trifle, well, premature. It is hardly a victory for female suffrage if the President’s wife gets the vote. (If it’s equality you care about, that’s more like a slap in the face.)</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/19120/original/fsv9gcby-1357793563.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/19120/original/fsv9gcby-1357793563.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/19120/original/fsv9gcby-1357793563.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19120/original/fsv9gcby-1357793563.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19120/original/fsv9gcby-1357793563.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19120/original/fsv9gcby-1357793563.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19120/original/fsv9gcby-1357793563.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19120/original/fsv9gcby-1357793563.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">One of these people chose her public life. Shouldn’t their children have the same opportunity?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Nicholas Asfouri</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But that’s not the main thing that perplexes me about recent reactions to the news of the royal pregnancy. My main puzzle – about everyone who expresses views on these matters, from the most <a href="http://www.norepublic.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4329&Itemid=1">loyal monarchists</a> all the way through to <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/editorial/hoopla-over-an-heir-should-not-blur-the-need-for-reform-20121204-2at9d.html">staunch republicans</a> – is their apparent indifference to Baby Cambridge’s own views about whether she or he wants to be Queen or King of England (let alone Australia).</p>
<p>“That’s ridiculous,” you say, “The baby is not even born yet – how could we ask her?” Of course not. She (let’s call her she) won’t be in a position to decide for the best part of twenty years, at the very least – and perhaps not for years after that, since many young people don’t make up their minds how they wish to spend their lives until well into their twenties or thirties.</p>
<p>But that’s the point. Baby Cambridge’s peers – <em>your</em> children and grandchildren – will all have the opportunity that we now take for granted, to decide for themselves what to make of their lives. On what possible grounds are we, or the state, or even her parents, entitled to deny the same opportunity to her? </p>
<p>That’s the real question we should all be asking, in my view, and it is not about discrimination in favour of royal children. It is about discrimination against them – about the denial in their case of basic freedoms we take for granted for everyone else.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/19123/original/yychc7bh-1357793750.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/19123/original/yychc7bh-1357793750.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/19123/original/yychc7bh-1357793750.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19123/original/yychc7bh-1357793750.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19123/original/yychc7bh-1357793750.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19123/original/yychc7bh-1357793750.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19123/original/yychc7bh-1357793750.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19123/original/yychc7bh-1357793750.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘A comfortable form of inherited imprisonment’?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Ross Setford</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To make it personal, imagine the prime minister turns up on <em>your</em> doorstep, with the joyful news that your child has been selected for future public office. She or he is going to be brought up to be Archbishop of Canterbury, or something equally splendid – excluding other careers, of course, and other activities in general, to the extent that they would be inappropriate in one destined to be so distinguished.</p>
<p>Are you delighted? Or off to the European Court of Human Rights, or its nearest Australian equivalent, to defend your child’s right to decide for themselves what they do with their life?</p>
<p>If you’re like me, you’ll have the latter reaction. You’ll be horrified. And you won’t be mollified by the prime minister’s assurance that of course your little dear will have the right to abdicate, if she really insists, when she grows up. </p>
<p>“Nothing simpler!”, says the prime minister. “True, millions would feel that she’s letting the side down, but legally speaking all it would take would be an Act of Parliament. And your second child in her place, of course.” Some choice!</p>
<p>But that’s precisely the situation facing Baby Cambridge and her future siblings. The only difference is that the prime minister doesn’t need to make a house call – the entire nation just takes for granted that that’s the deal.</p>
<p>Is this really acceptable? Do these children really have fewer rights than all other children to be born in Britain and Australia over the next few years? If not, then we are simply not entitled to presume that they will wish to spend their lives in our service, with all that that entails (a public life, with many restrictions, among other things). </p>
<p>We are entitled to request that they do so, of course, but not until they are adults, and only then without pressure or presumption. We may hope that they will say “yes”, but our duty as a nation – a solemn duty, surely, to the children of a family to whom we owe so much – is to guarantee them this basic freedom.</p>
<p>So the way we select our monarchs needs to change. If the monarchy is to survive, its days as “a comfortable form of inherited imprisonment”, as one of Prince Charles’ biographers described it <a href="http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20100343,00.html">long ago</a>, must be numbered. It must become an opt-in system, without any presumption that particular individuals will choose to volunteer. Baby Cambridge and her siblings must be given the same options as their non-royal peers, even if they also have one more option, to put their names on the list of potential successors to the throne. </p>
<p>They must also have a clear entitlement to remove themselves from the list, of course, with no unfairly binding presumption that they will not do so. So long as everyone else on the list is a volunteer, they could resign from it without transferring an unasked-for obligation to a sibling.</p>
<p>The moral case for this change is so clear, in my view, that I find it hard to believe that the present system will survive for very long, either in Britain and the Commonwealth or in other modern democratic monarchies with a similar respect for human rights, such as Norway, Sweden, Denmark, The Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and Spain.</p>
<p>But some truths have a way of hiding in plain sight, so obvious that it is hard for us to concede that they are truths. If things were that straightforward, we think, why didn’t we see it all along? </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/19125/original/rk6c97fb-1357794049.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/19125/original/rk6c97fb-1357794049.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/19125/original/rk6c97fb-1357794049.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19125/original/rk6c97fb-1357794049.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19125/original/rk6c97fb-1357794049.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19125/original/rk6c97fb-1357794049.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=556&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19125/original/rk6c97fb-1357794049.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=556&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19125/original/rk6c97fb-1357794049.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=556&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Republicans may like to get rid of the monarchy altogether, but shouldn’t monarchists agree that it should be voluntary?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Jonathan Brady</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Intelligent people go to considerable lengths to deny this one, in my experience. Many insist that the royal heirs do have a sufficient choice after all, though it is as plain as day that to the extent that they have any freedom at all to decide what to do with their lives, it depends on a difficult, highly public and personally costly process of opting-out. </p>
<p>To take herself off the list, a royal heir would have to be prepared to disappoint a nation’s expectations, inculcated throughout a childhood in which she had been taught that this is her duty, her lot, her role in life. (There’s the small matter of putting a sibling in the hot seat, too.) In my view, it is both ludicrous and a little callous to suggest that this is choice enough, when it is so far from the freedom we take for granted for our own children.</p>
<p>Other people respond that while it’s true that the royal heirs don’t have a real choice, the benefits to the nation outweigh any concerns about the children’s rights. After all, they might be needed again, as in the Blitz, to raise the nation’s spirits by remaining in London in time of danger. Yet others say that choice is greatly overrated, and more children should be deprived of it. (I’m not making this up.)</p>
<p>Eventually, the fish will stop flapping. As in cases like gay marriage, fair-minded people will agree that the point is obvious, and that tradition needs to make way for simple justice. Steps will be taken to make the monarchy less unfair to the family on which it depends. No doubt it will survive, like marriage, more robust and popular than ever for dealing with the injustice at the heart of its present incarnation. Australia will still face the choice as to whether it wants to continue to play this traditional game, of course, but that’s a different matter.</p>
<p>If we moved quickly, this change could be in place in time for the new Baby Cambridge to benefit from it – before she goes to school, for example, and learns that her opportunities are different from those of other children. So here’s my question to all those folk in Cambridge and elsewhere, whose hearts have been warmed by the news of the royal pregnancy: don’t we owe it to this welcome child to make this change, and to do it soon?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/11518/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Huw Price has received funding from the ARC.</span></em></p>It’s been a big winter here in Cambridge for fans of the Royal Family. First we had the Duke and Duchess themselves, Will and Kate, making their debut visit to the city, bringing some welcome cheer to…Huw Price, Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/112472012-12-10T02:59:03Z2012-12-10T02:59:03ZJacintha Saldanha is the latest victim of a media saturated world<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/18482/original/c55xzbpx-1355102641.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">2day FM is in hot water after a prank call to Kate Middleton's hospital went terribly wrong.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Warren Clarke</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/dec/07/duchess-cambridge-hoax-call-nurse-found-dead">dreadful death of Jacintha Saldanha</a> after she transferred a prank call from 2Day FM to a fellow nurse is a harrowing example of the hurt that can be caused when ordinary people get caught up in media culture.</p>
<p>A dedicated nurse is dead. The Duchess of Cambridge is burdened with this, adding to the discomfort of having to <a href="cy-in-public-11132">announce a pregnancy too soon</a>. Radio hosts Mel Greig and Michael Christian face uncertain futures, personally and professionally. Fingers of blame are pointed in their direction, from the medical profession, advertisers and the public.</p>
<p>From the outside, it’s hard to see why no-one paused to think about a prank that could only work if someone could be duped into making a mistake which could clearly have consequences for their career. But perhaps the key is the lack of time that people have to consider the ethics of living in a world where anyone can be summoned to perform for global audiences.</p>
<p>Saldanha’s experience is not unprecedented. There has been a prodigious increase in media time and space that has to be filled. One result of this is that ordinary people actually have a pretty good chance of ending up on air, or, as in Saldanha’s case, being responsible for others doing so.</p>
<p>For many, that’s exactly where they want to be. According Professor Nick Couldry, most of us regard the media as <a href="http://books.google.com.au/books?id=Ql-L-V87cw0C&pg=PA15&lpg=PA15&dq=nick+couldry+media+sacred&source=bl&ots=tO_O08krsV&sig=PrPVods0oo3_tyC5W8MQ1BDgER4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=EzbFUJzDOaeWiQev6oG4Dg&ved=0CFMQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=nick%20couldry%20media%20sacred&f=false">somehow sacred</a>. Couldry thinks audiences believe that television studios and the like are places where societies really come to life, with an intensity that can never be matched off-air. One example of this is the new phenomenon of media tourism. Fans travel thousands of miles to stand in awe in the places where shows such as The Sopranos and Sex And The City are made. Such devotion speaks to a general yearning to be a part of a magical media world, if only for a second.</p>
<p>According to <a href="http://www.uk.sagepub.com/books/Book233425">Australia’s Graeme Turner</a>, this enchantment reflects a more fundamental belief affecting public sensibilities in a media saturated society; the idea that appearing in the media is a form of social validation.</p>
<p>Perhaps this is why no one thought to question whether Jacintha Saldanha would object to being the butt of an international joke. UK DJ Steve Penk <a href="http://news.sky.com/story/1022751/kate-prank-call-could-end-radio-wind-ups">observed yesterday</a> that the prank call has become a mainstay of contemporary radio. It’s a genre where the public regularly claims their place in the live media spectacle, and generally don’t seem to mind. The Saldanha tragedy could shake that practice to its core.</p>
<p>This is a story that reminds us of the many other ordinary people who are shoved into the media world against their wishes, in profoundly upsetting ways. Research on school shootings shows how victimised institutions quickly have to learn how to deal with the press for investigations and grieving can proceed. Like it or not, they must have a media strategy. Columbine survivor Andrew Robinson was so affected by his experiences with the media that he felt <a href="http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-04-15-Columbine_N.htm">compelled to attend film school</a>, just so he could set the record straight with his own movie on the massacre.</p>
<p>The constant injunction to produce content for unrelenting media industries is a problem for people within and without. There’s a lot of evidence that many don’t want to participate in a media saturated world. But opting out seems to be less and less of an option. </p>
<p>That’s one thing when you’re George Entwistle. The erstwhile Director General of the BBC was <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/9669764/George-Entwistle-54-days-as-BBC-director-general.html">taken to task</a> by one of his own journalists for not keeping up with Twitter trends during the Newsnight fiasco. </p>
<p>But it’s quite another when you’re Jacintha Saldanha; expected to combine nursing duties with the need to keep an eye out for media intrusion. Perhaps the problem is that in a media saturated world, no one has the time to wonder if people might not want to be in on the joke.</p>
<p>None of this is to say that Greig, Christian and 2DayFM should not be held accountable for their actions. But we should also ask how people end up in positions where such mistakes can happen. </p>
<p>The proliferation of ethics scandals in the media indicates Jacintha Saldana’s terrible death is part of a problem that goes much deeper than prank calls.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/11247/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andy Ruddock does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The dreadful death of Jacintha Saldanha after she transferred a prank call from 2Day FM to a fellow nurse is a harrowing example of the hurt that can be caused when ordinary people get caught up in media…Andy Ruddock, Senior Lecturer, Research Unit in Media Studies, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.