Harry coming home; now British press faces fire

In a news town that lives and dies by the scoop, this was one of the juiciest stories around: Prince Harry, Queen Elizabeth’s fun-loving, red-headed grandson, was going to war on the front lines of Afghanistan.

But wait, the Ministry of Defense said. Hold off on reporting it for awhile – three long months, to be exact – and you can have not only the story, but the works: Interviews with the prince in his rough desert troop quarters; video of him peering at Taliban positions and man-handling a machine gun; thoughtful comments from him about how the Queen gave him the news he was going to war; what it felt like to go without a royal shower for four days.

From the hallowed BBC to the raucous Sun, from the elitist liberal Guardian to the conservative Telegraph, they agreed. Prince Harry would have his war in secret.

The almost unprecedented news blackout lasted 10 weeks.

But secrets, in the end, have a short shelf life in the news business. A hint of the news trickled out on a German website on Wednesday, and by Thursday, it was all over the U.S.-based weblog, the Drudge Report. “Prince Harry Fights on Frontlines in Afghanistan: 3 Month Tour,” Drudge proclaimed, sending British editors flying to remake the next day’s pages

Today, the Ministry of Defense announced that Harry was coming home – a flood of news that followed the breach of the embargo by international news sites a day earlier had compromised his safety and that of his fellow troops, the ministry said.

“Following a detailed assessment of the risks by the operational chain of command, the decision has been taken … to withdraw Prince Harry from Afghanistan immediately,” the ministry said.

Following the huge splash of stories, with a gritty, camouflage-clad Harry on nearly every front page, a new skirmish broke out. Should the media have agreed to keep quiet? Was the embargo an act of collective censorship in exchange for the right to print military propaganda at the end? Or, as the broad majority of the British public seemed to think, was a press corps former Prime Minister Tony Blair famously described as “feral dogs” exercising a rare degree of responsible restraint?

“I was amazed it lasted as long as it did,” said Graham Dudman, managing editor of the Rupert Murdoch-owned Sun, which normally would rather chew off its own foot than make a deal along with competing tabloids, such as the Daily Mirror.

“This is the most fiercely competitive newspaper market in the world, and there’s nothing one paper likes more than getting one over on a rival. But in this case the line held,” Dudman said. “And that’s because you’re dealing with soldiers’ lives over there. This isn’t a story about some two-bit, here-today, gone-tomorrow celebrity. And it’s not just about Prince Harry. It’s about all the troops out there risking their lives for Britain every minute of every day. Are we to sacrifice their safety for the sake of a newspaper story? The answer was, we weren’t.”

The Sun led today with news of Harry’s imminent return home – “Hero Harry’s Coming Home” – alongside a story of a New Zealand man arrested for attempting carnal knowledge of a goat.

Other newspapers had huge spreads, with links to photo slideshows and video interviews on their websites. There were accounts of the interview the prince had secretly given in London before his departure in December, stories on the prince’s emotional calls home to his girlfriend, detailed accounts of Harry, a junior officer in the Household Cavalry known in the military as “Cornet Wales,” coordinating airstrikes for American pilots.

“Cornet Wales tells of his pride in serving country,” the Telegraph said in its upper-right-hand lead story.

The story was assembled from reports from a small pool of reporters and cameramen allowed to go to Afghanistan in the wake of a front-page expose on the Drudge Report, the political gossip website that originally broke the news of President Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky.

Drudge, in turn, had credited an Australian women’s magazine which had run the story in January, purportedly unaware of the embargo, and Germany’s Bild newspaper, which published a brief gossip-style item on its website Wednesday.

By this morning, the second-guessing had already begun.

“Can you think of any country outside China, Russia and other near totalitarian states that would ever find every single national editor agreeing to simply facilitate the presence of somebody on the front line?” Channel 4 news presenter Jon Snow, who had been unaware of the embargo his station had agreed to, asked on his morning broadcast. “What else do you think the media are now prepared to cover up?”

“The royal family and the army couldn’t have expected better coverage, could they?” Richard Lance Keeble, journalism professor at Lincoln University and author of a book on journalism ethics, said in an interview. “The story in Afghanistan isn’t Prince Harry. The story is that British troops should not be there, they should never have been there, and they should certainly come out now. But what we read about is Prince Harry and all his military glory.”

But what if a news report had resulted in Prince Harry’s capture by the Taliban, or a massive attack on his unit?

“Although it was an unusual example of self-censorship by a competitive media, I think on balance it was justified,” said Roy Greenslade, professor of journalism at City University in London. “It’s understandable that he is a target, and understandable that there should have been a blackout.”

In a series of interviews, leading newspaper editors said the embargo was proposed by the Ministry of Defense in the wake of the splash of stories over an earlier proposal, later revoked, to send Prince Harry to Iraq. They emphasized that the blackout was agreed to, after lengthy discussion, unanimously and voluntarily; any news organization that violated it would face no punishment more severe than public opprobrium.

“Initially, obviously, there was distinct skepticism about the workability of such an agreement. But we talked it through collectively, and agreed there was a chance it could work,” said Rhidian Wynn Davies, consulting editor at the Daily Telegraph.

“This was in no way the media collectively giving the prince an easy ride. It wasn’t something for nothing. We were given assurances, which have been borne out, that we would get access to the prince on a pooled basis, and we would be furnished with high-quality content for our newspapers and websites,” he said.

At least two American news organizations, CNN and the Associated Press, were also party to the discussions.

“It was a difficult decision, but in the end, not really,” said John Daniszewski, managing editor for international news at the AP. “If we are in an embedded situation or something like that, we don’t disclose military maneuvers or things that would put people in danger. So in the end it was our feeling that in this case it was not only a matter of the prince’s safety, but the safety of the people with him, and we just didn’t feel that it was our job to expose people to any additional hazard.”

And so, sometime in December, Harry slipped off to become the first member of the royal family in 25 years to serve in active combat. His deployment had been scheduled to end sometime in April.

“I am very disappointed that foreign websites have decided to run this story without consulting us,” Gen. Richard Dannatt, chief of the general staff, said after the news broke. “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 … took the commendable attitude to restrain their coverage.”

In the end, the prince got the bulk of his tour of duty, and the press got their communal scoop – a compelling story which, for many editors, was as powerful an incentive as the urge to do the right thing.

“The motivation to be honest was the offer of what is quite frankly fantastic material,” the Sun’s Dudman said. “You’ve got footage and pictures of the third in line to the British throne firing a machine gun in anger at the Taliban!”

kim.murphy@latimes.com