Princess Diana Documentary Cleared Of Any Broadcasting Breaches | Ofcom Clear Channel 4
Back in June, Channel 4 screened a controversial documentary about the crash that killed Princess Diana. Titled ‘Diana: The Witnesses In The Tunnel’, it was a look at the tragedy from the point of view of the paparazzi photographers who were present at the scene and wrongly blamed for the crash afterwards. I wrote a full and thorough review of the documentary at the time it aired which you can read here.
Ofcom (the regulators of British television) received 62 complaints about the documentary after it aired, and so launched an investigation. Today they have cleared Channel 4 of any wrongdoing or breaches of the broadcasting code.
Most of the complaints concerned the pictures which were shown on screen during the documentary showing Diana receiving treatment at the scene of the crash. Ofcom ruled the use of the pictures was “justified by context”, and “integral” to the programme.
I have to agree as I watched the programme expecting the worst and was pleasantly surprised at the lack of gratuitousness on display. The pictures were just one aspect of a very interesting look at the incident from an unusual and opposite point of view.
The controversy at the time was that Princes William and Harry, Diana’s two sons, had formally asked for the images to be removed from the programme, and that request was not complied with. On this point Ofcom found that the documentary was a “serious piece of investigative journalism examining issues and events which remain firmly in the public consciousness”, and so declared it was not in breach.
I usually don’t agree with Ofcom on rulings such as these because more often than not they will side with the few complainants a programme receives, totally ignoring the 99.9% of people who watched it and didn’t see anything worth complaining about. But they are completely right in this case, as I suspect the people who complained didn’t even watch the programme.
Princess Diana, Diana, Prince William, Prince Harry, Royals, Paparazzi, Photographers, Diana Crash, Ofcom, Channel 4
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