by Frank James
It appears it was a mistake by an Australian women’s magazine that was clueless about the circumstances surrounding Prince Harry’s being sent to a war zone that led to the chain of events that has resulted in His Royal Highness Prince Henry of Wales being yanked out of Afghanistan by British military officials.
According to reports, the magazine New Idea, ran a story about his combat deployment in its January 15 edition because it didn’t know there was an embargo on that information, essentially an agreement between the media and British authorities that the prince’s assignment wouldn’t be reported on out of fear that his own and his unit’s security would be compromised.
The British Army’s top general, Sir General Richard Danatt is seriously fuming over the breaking of the embargo, according to reports.
As Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald reports:
Chief of the General Staff and professional head of the British Army, General Sir Richard Dannatt, is furious the embargo has been broken.
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“I am very disappointed that foreign websites have decided to run this story without consulting us,” he said in a statement.
“This is in stark contrast to the highly-responsible attitude that the whole of the UK print and broadcast media, along with a small number of overseas, who have entered into an understanding with us over the coverage of Prince Harry on operations.
“After a lengthy period of discussion between the MoD and the editors of regional, national and international media, the editors took the commendable attitude to restrain their coverage,” Dannatt said.
Now the story was out, the military would consider whether Harry’s deployment should continue, he said, appealing to the media to restrain from reporting the prince’s every move.
But in Sydney, New Idea denied knowingly breaking an embargo on the story.
“New Idea was not issued with a press embargo and was unaware of the existence of one,” the magazine said in a statement.
“The story was published on Monday, January 7. Since then New Idea has received no comment from the British Ministry of Defence.
“We take these matters very seriously and would never knowingly break an embargo.
“We regret any issues the revelation of this story in America has caused today.”
Embargoes are fairly commonplace when governments or companies want to provide information to journalists before they releas it to the public generally. They essentially ask journalists to keep the information secret from the public until a certain date and, often, even hour.Typically, it allows the organization to not pre-empt its own press conference. It also lets reporters to do a lot of reporting in advance so that by the time the embargo is lifted, a well-reported story is ready to go.
More infrequently, embargoes are placed on stories for security reasons, such as when President Bush has gone to Iraq. The journalists who were made aware of the trips beforehand in order to accompany him were sworn to secrecy to protect the president.
Embargoes to protect the safety of the top government officials or a Prince Harry are well accepted in journalism. No sane reporter would ever seek to jeopardize the lives of people who are high-value targets.
But the case of Prince Harry reveals the problem with embargoes. They are only as strong as their weakest link.
In this case that was an Australian woman’s publication that had no idea a pact existed to not report on the prince’s deployment. Once a single news organization “breaks” the embargo, even unintentionally, it stays broken.
In this case, the German newspaper Bild, also published a Prince-Harry’s-in-Afghanistan story yesterday. Then the Drudge Report picked it up. Matt Drudge gets credit for taking a story that had gotten little notice and making it go global.
But it was the accidental breaking of the embargo a month ago really precipitated the whole thing.
While I’ve never heard journalists debate whether embargoes should be honored in cases where human safety is concerned, there have long been debates about whether embargoes on stories where safety isn’t a consideration should be honored.
Some journalists don’t like embargoes, precisely for the reason that if one organization doesn’t, for whatever reason, play by the rules and violates the pact, everybody else is screwed. Some journalists also take the view that it’s a way to let the government or companies dictate the timing on news. They believe that when we journalists learn of something, we owe it to the public to tell them sooner rather than later.
But embargoes are a fact of life in journalism. And so is the fact that sometimes, they blow up.