Scandal: Prince Harry mingles with the ladies on his Las Vegas holiday when he was pictured cavorting naked with women in a hotel.
Hello Friends!
Minutes after naked images of Prince Harry appeared on an American website, they were available to millions of internet users around the world – including in Britain.
The two grainy pictures of the young royal cavorting with a naked woman in his Las Vegas hotel suite were published on the internet at around 12.30am British time – 4.30pm in California.
Yet despite the ease of finding them with a simple internet search, the photographs could not be used by British newspapers or television stations after St James’s Palace warned that the Royal Family regarded the pictures as a gross invasion of the prince’s privacy.
The pictures first appeared on TMZ - the second most popular entertainment news website in the US and has an audience of more than 18.5million on its own.
Surrounded by new-found friends, the Prince was free to act as he pleased - until photos of his fun were shared around the world.
But within hours, they were also being shared on dozens of other websites with a huge combined global reach.By last night, a Google search for ‘Prince Harry Naked’ produced 68,300,000 results. A search for ‘Prince Harry Naked Pictures’ generated 25,800,000 results.
In response to the blanket ban on their use in the British Press, Sir Christopher Meyer, who chaired the PCC regulatory body between 2003 and 2009 told The Times it was unclear whether the prince's privacy had in fact been breached.
'You could argue, "Sure it's a private place, it's his room", but if he invites a bunch of strangers to his room is his privacy already violated.'
But St James’s Palace stance on the issue has lead to some commentators to raise questions about the influence of the Leveson inquiry.Royal correspondent Robert Jobson, writing for CNN, said: 'Surely the British paying public has a right to know what their royal family is up to.
'But post-Leveson no editor seemed, initially at least, is prepared to risk the backlash.
'Amid all the media navel-gazing there seems to be a genuine fear that the press feels it is no longer drinking in "The Last Chance Saloon" but time has already been called.'
BANNED IN BRITAIN - BUT THE PICTURES CAN BE SEEN WORLDWIDE
The photos were first published by US site TMZ. But by yesterday evening dozens of websites were using them including:
Guido Fawkes - Order Order, Westminster gossip blog
CNN International
Huffington Post US
TIME
MSNBC (NBC news video)
JustJared.com
New York Daily News
The Atlantic
People.com
Power FM, Australia
Entertainment.ie, Ireland
CBC News, Canada
Hindustan times, India
National Turk, Turkey
Zee News, India
Like wildfire: How the story of Harry's naked photos broke and then swept across the globe online.
What happens in Vegas... doesn't stay in Vegas: The party-loving royal was enjoying himself - but it is unclear as to what sort of reaction he will face on his return home.
Meanwhile, a former News of the World executive editor said the decision by the British press not to publish the naked pictures of Prince Harry is a sign that the Leveson Inquiry has resulted in 'neutered newspapers',Neil Wallis said he would have published the photos before the inquiry into media ethics began.He said newspapers were now 'terrified of their own shadow' and would not print the pictures even though it was in the public interest.
Once Harry had returned to the UK, lawyers for his father Prince Charles issued threats of legal action. Meanwhile, the pictures continued to be available online, making a mockery of our privacy laws.Popular American blogs including Rickey.org and NYDailynews.com picked up on the story and published the pictures within an hour of them appearing on TMZ.
By 8am in the UK, the American television network NBC had a video report showing the photographs and they were featured on magazine website The People.
The pictures also soon appeared on the Toronto Sun website in Canada, the Hindustan Times in India and the Daily Life in Australia.
Italian and Spanish websites – including Hot Magazine – had published the pictures yesterday afternoon, and even in France, where privacy laws are strict, websites were displaying them.
Respected broadcasters such as CNN in the United States and Canada’s CBC news showed all or part of the pictures in broadcasts.And by late afternoon yesterday, the pictures had been published by America’s LA Times and TIME websites, the Huffington Post, Australia’s Ninemsm and Powerfm, the Vancouver Sun in Canada and Jezebel, a popular American celebrity news and gossip website which closely follows the US tabloids.
TMZ – the website which broke the news of Michael Jackson’s death – was even running a poll asking its viewers if Prince Harry was ‘awesome’ or ‘disgraceful’. More than 340,000 had voted, with almost two-thirds opting for ‘awesome’.
Pugh's take on the Harry saga.
Explaining himself? The young prince was on holiday after an exemplary performance as an Olympics ambassador before his wild break.
Oh no! Prince Harry pictured just an hour after the photos went online in what could be the moment of realization.
All of these websites can be easily viewed from within the UK, and many, such as the Huffington Post, TMZ and Jezebel, already have a loyal British audience.
Popular British political blogger Guido Fawkes also published the pictures with a boast about how newspapers were unable to do so.
And despite the efforts by the Royal Family to block publication of the pictures in the UK, they were printed in Northern Ireland after Ireland’s Evening Herald put one on their front page.
The paper is readily available north of the border. Meanwhile on Facebook, which has more than 900million global users, the pictures were featuring on the newsfeeds of millions of UK users as they were discussed and debated around the world.
And throughout yesterday the pictures were commented on and shared by millions of Twitter users meaning ‘Prince Harry’ was one of the ‘trends’, or most popular discussion topics, on the social network.Mr Wallis told BBC2’s Newsnight: 'The situation is fun, it’s a good, classic newspaper situation, the problem is in this post-Leveson era where newspapers are simply terrified of their own shadow, they daren’t do things that most of the country, if they saw it in the newspaper, would think ‘that’s a bit of a laugh’.
'There would be no harm done and they would not think any worse of either the paper or of Prince Harry.'The public interest defence was 'pretty straightforward', he added.
'He is third in line to the throne, he’s been on the world stage for week and weeks and weeks, he is supposedly surrounded by police security officers.'
The situation was 'fine if you were my 27-year-old son, but this is the third in line to the throne'.
Former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie told Newsnight it was a 'fantastic' story: 'Literally any journalist worth his salt, whether at one end of the market or the other, would have said ‘thank you God’.'It doesn’t affect Prince Harry at all, because in a way he is a 28-year-old (sic) Army officer, he is single and he is cavorting with ladies who wish to be cavorted with.
'So where are the issues? There are no issues except one: Leveson.'
But broadcaster and alleged victim of phone hacking Vanessa Feltz told the programme: 'If there is some kind of moral awakening then it’s about damn time because there are too many people whose lives have been played fast and loose with for nothing more than a bit of titillation over your Frosties.'
Culled from The Daily Mail UK.
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Simply Cheska...
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