Diarist, as a forum, member's opinions will differ and that should make it too a more interesting setting, so don't fell discourage to post here
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But one thing though is that, this is a thread about the couples' wedding so the majority will have a higher appreciation for them. Since you did make the effort to join in we can assume you have an interest in their relationship, I myself wouldn't spend time on a thread that doesn't interest me, although some others seem to do just that..... Anyways, at the end we must agree to disagree.
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Thank you Mia Mae for your response,
I am afraid that several people here have misunderstood the point I was trying to make; I am NOT objecting to people taking a different view to me - first and foremost, I welcome debate - after all discussion and advice is how we all move forward as people, isn't it?
The only thing that I was objecting to was what struck me [and others, bearing in mind PMs I have received -thank you, good people, I will be responding to you later ] was the language being used , which seemed to be more a 'personal attack' on me - the golden rule used to be 'politely question the ideas in the post, not attack the poster'. I will however take up future posts with the mods.
Just to emphasise again, I was NOT referring to people's right to disagree, only the language being used. Could I make a general plea - as an ordinary, ordinary poster, that we are all courtly to each other when we disagree?
I will obviously expand on this more in the appropriate thread, but a person who apparently posts here [i don't know her user name] contacted me personally some months ago, asking how she could get an invitation to a Buckingham Palace Garden party. I have told her how to go about this, as I do for any one who asks - no special favours!; at the time she asked why I was not a member of TRF [which I had not heard of] and so I only recently got round to joining.
Back on topic; the Daily Mail article [see previous posts] re-iterates some of the points that I have actually made on this forum recently. As to how newspapers get their information - which means whether the DM is true or not, there are various schools of thought.
It's a bit of a longwinded question to answer, but I will try, hoping that this will help some of us:
In basic terms, there are two ways that British Newspapers acquire Royal Information: these are: Officially and Unofficially. 'Official means' are quite obvious:
The Issue of
Official Communications [from BP and other Royal 'Offices'] which can be written and unwritten.
Examples of such
written communications would be announcements of forthcoming marriages, royal births, deaths etc etc, announcements of programmes of Royal Engagements [meaning visits etc, not betrothals!!] Dates of Official Occasions [such as the forthcoming Wedding, the Diamond Jubilee etc, annual information Royal Ascot etc]. Some announcements - royal births, betrothals etc - are also posted on the Palace gates, Press Releases etc.
The best examples of
Official Oral communications are the formal briefings held by the Press Secretaries, to which members of the Press and other interested parties etc are summoned. These are given the status of official announcements, in the sense that they can be relied on as accurate. They are given by named people, who can be quoted by name. Sometimes even the Queen makes such an announcement - one one occasion, this was during an Investiture, when HM actually made an announcement of a royal birth; this was because at that precise time, her staff were pinning up a notice of the annoucment on the Palace gates. [Cheering and applause then followed!!]
For the sake of completeness, I should also include those occasions when the Press actually shout out [a bit rude, this!] a question to a member of the Royal Family during a royal engagement etc, who then replies [e.g when the Prince of Wales is asked [ambushed??] how he feels about the Engagement of Prince William, or how the Prince of Wales feels after his recent polo fall / gardening accident etc, and he then replies, which the press can of course then quote in full as his words.
'
Unofficial' Sources of information are more encompassing and cause the most difficulties.
Despite what most of us understand by 'unofficial', a very important source of unofficial information are those remarks given by members of the Royal Household on what is known as an 'unattributable basis' - this is a hard concept for us to understand, but basically, it is 'facts intended to supplement official information which BP [etc] has officially issued'. They can be regarded as 'true'.
Can I give an example of this? 15 years or so ago, ago, the Queen Mother missed a couple of engagements [rare for her] and people began 'thinking the worst'. An official annoucement by Clarence House had been put out to the effect that the QM was 'indisposed'. This did nothing to quell the rumours in the press that something was 'seriously wrong' - the QM after all was very old! It was at this point that one of her staff told groups of people that [and I can quote this, for I was at one such occasion] - 'Listen, the QM is getting over a very bad cold; she's in no apparent danger, but of course you have to rememember she is old; bascially she is spending a lot of time resting in bed, reading the racing news and watching the racing on the television and keeping warm. She's in very good spirits and, knowing HM, we expect her to be up and about in the not too distant future'. Those journalists who recieved this briefing began to incorporate it in their reports, writing stories such as 'palace sources say that the QM is getting over a bad cold, there's no cause for alarm, but wisely she is staying in bed, very comfortable / having one of her favourite gins-and-Dubbonets / her favourite Corgis are with her etc etc.' And so you can see how stories 'spin out'
The other source of unofficial information is of course the many different 'usual' tactics employed by journalists'. These range from the more old-fashioined observation [e.g. standing on public property outside Royal Residences seing who is visiting] to the more disreputable and questionable and sometimes downright illegal tactics. For example, some of the Tabloid Press are known to pay staff [low-paid sevants] for information; some journalists even go so far as to obtain work in BP themselves; then there is the alleged tapping of royal telephones, and then the so-called 'friends' who contact papers with information which they mostly sell [I ask you, if you were a genuine friend of a member of the Royal Family, would you sell information - I think not!!]
There is one other source of unofficial information, which is very much more problematic - when members of the Royal Family [never the Queen] apparently [ I say 'apparently', because in many cases, who really knows?] are happy for their genuine friends to give information to the press. Some of this is given quite openenly. One such example was the outburst of Prince Charles' friend Nicholas Soames MP to the papers following Diana's Panorama broadcast, which was apparently made with the blessing of Prince Charles.
Other information is more clandestine - there were lots of rumours that Diana herself did brief the DM journalist Richard Kay with 'her side of the story' quite often. Certainly, she was seen getting into Mr Kay's car once.
And this brings me back [finally] to the question posed by Muriel. The DM is a strange type of newspaper; it is a tabloid and does indeed contain on occasions what I would call 'typically tabloid rubbish'; but there again, Richard Kay still works for that paper, and it is possible that his contacts are still very good.
Sorry for the length of this post, but I did want to try to share the insight I have gained. Please feel free to debate what I have said, but please remember I am trying in good faith, to help with background.
Thank you,
Alex
