On Tuesday, as the crisis in Gaza continued, turmoil built in Haiti and Joe Biden and Donald Trump were confirmed as their parties’ presidential candidates, the White House press secretary was asked a question by a journalist that caused her, briefly, to laugh.
“Does the White House ever digitally alter photos of the president?”, Karine Jean-Pierre was asked by a reporter.
“Why would we digitally alter photos? Are you comparing us to what is going on in the UK?” she replied. “No – that is not something that we do here.”
When Kensington Palace released an apparently candid photograph last weekend of the Princess of Wales and her children, timed to coincide with Mother’s Day, it no doubt expected the usual warm reception, perhaps with a few approving front pages.
One week on, it is fair to say things have not gone to plan. After multiple clumsy edits to the photo were identified, five leading photo agencies issued an almost unprecedented “kill notice” of the “manipulated” image.
Since then, not only the White House press corps but large sections of the world’s media have been fascinated by the photograph – and what it may say about the princess, who has been recovering from surgery – putting the royals at the centre of a dangerous crisis of credibility.
If you’re caught being untruthful once, after all, why should anyone ever believe you? In Spain, some outlets have repeated claims, rubbished by the palace last month, that the princess is in a coma. On US talkshows, longstanding if highly libellous rumours about the royal marriage, similarly denied, are being openly aired and mocked.
And on social media, needless to say, the unfounded conspiracies are wilder still. Kate has had a facelift, or she is in hiding, or has been replaced by a body double. Most are easy to dismiss, but when even the ITV royal editor, Chris Ship, one of the select handful of “royal rota” journalists who are briefed by the palace, posts a tweet that begins: “I’ve never been much of a conspiracy theorist but …”, the Firm undeniably has a problem.
Who would be a royal? According to the palace, lest we forget, the 42-year-old mother of three has undergone major abdominal surgery and is not well enough to appear publicly. When the operation was first revealed on 17 January, Kensington Palace said she was not expected to make any appearances until at least Easter. That, they insist, has not changed. So why the frenzied conspiracies?
Perhaps because Catherine remains media catnip, and is incredibly important to the royal public image; three months without her was always going to be a challenge. Things would arguably have been more manageable were it not for the unhappy coincidence of King Charles’s announcements of his prostate treatment and cancer .
While Catherine had requested privacy over her diagnosis, the king and his Buckingham Palace press team opted to be more open, though the type of cancer has not been revealed. Most were happy to accept this as the princess’s right, yet the fact the king has remained somewhat visible, even while undergoing cancer treatment, made the absolute silence from Catherine all the more evident.
What tipped online mutterings into febrile speculation was when the Prince of Wales pulled out of the funeral of his godfather on 27 February, citing only a “personal matter”. The Mother’s Day photo was evidently an attempt to settle the mood; instead, its inept handling turned an uncomfortable drama into a full-blown crisis. Even a brief apology, signed in Catherine’s name, did not help. Either palace advisers had not grasped the gravity of their mistake, or – just possibly – the royal couple, so protective of their children’s privacy, were resisting their guidance.
Can they recover from it? Only if they change tack, says Emma Streets, an associate director at the communications agency Tigerbond who specialises in crisis PR. There remains a lot of empathy towards the princess, she says, adding: “I think [the episode] proves that she’s only human. But it’s crucial that the palace do not repeat a [mistake] on this scale.”
They will have to provide some form of update on the princess’s health by Easter, says Streets, whether or not Catherine is well enough to resume normal public appearances. “I think they really need to maintain that timeline to avoid any further controversy. So the pressure is on for the comms team to handle that without putting a foot wrong, and really, meticulously, plan.”
Streets says the royal family’s long-practised strategy of “never complain, never explain” is outdated. “That doesn’t work today, given the speed that this story will spread online, and I think that massively needs addressing from a strategic point of view.”
That view is echoed by Lynn Carratt, the head of talent at digital specialists Press Box PR, who says she has been “racking my brains” trying to understand why Kensington Palace did not simply release the undoctored image. “They could have put this to bed straight away,” she says.
“There needs to be an overhaul of their comms strategy and a bit of honesty and trust with the press. I kind of understand why there isn’t – but they need a whole new approach to PR, to bring it into the modern world of the media.
“We’re not just talking about print press and broadcast, when it’s now social media and the digital space where people are consuming the news. It’s very different, and you need to do PR differently for that space.”
