Page 51 - Courting the Media Contemporary Perspectives on Media and Law

42 Graham White

her staff, friends and public figures who had come to know her. Unexpected
glimpses of the relationships between the public and the establishment were
relished in the left-liberal press, such as the tense exchanges between Michael
Mansfield and former defence minister Nicholas Soames who was accused in
court of attempting to intimidate Diana over her pursuit of a campaign against
landmines which ran contrary to government policy [Bates]. Insights into the
relationships between various areas of the security services, their agents and
minders - most vividly captured in the day‘s evidence given by Sir Richard
Dearlove, former head of MI6, the British government‘s overseas security and
espionage agency – were also prominent. Given that evidence from exchanges
such as this latter often proved to be of relatively little consequence in the
case, it is perhaps unsurprising that press accounts often seemed to focus on
the performative elements of the courtroom exchanges concerning these
matters rather than on the material such exchanges provided to either or any of
the legally interested parties. In these accounts, the chief spook was read as an
individual with a persona which seems to embody all of the perceived clichés
surrounding such figures. For example, the Ex-MI6 Chief admits agents do
have a licence to kill but denies executing Diana [English, R].

SOCIAL PERFORMANCE AND ITS INTERPRETATION

On footage of Diana and Dodi at the Ritz hotel shortly before the crash, it
was said that ―she laughed and smiled like the old Diana, and for a moment it
was difficult to believe that she had been dead for ten years. Dodi‘s body
language was solicitous and attentive, slipping an arm round her waist and
looking like the cat that got the cream‖ [Hamilton, A].
Ironically, this interest in social performance both as presented in evidence
in the case and as enacted behaviour in the courtroom created a reckoning
between the higher symbolism of the Inquest and the proliferation of localised,
fragmented narrative viewpoints which are a frequent feature of commentaries
on figures such as Howsam and Loughrey. Indeed, much media commentary
on the Inquest relied on foregrounding forms of social performance in partial
and subjective readings, despite such ways of reading being condemned when
presented by other observers – the Loughreys, the Howsams, etc . On the one
hand media accounts of the ‗backstage‘ significance of private lives and the
intimate details of the Princess‘s personal relationships attested to the
revelation of truths in the proceedings; yet on the other media condemnation –
or at least, not so gentle ridicule - of those members of the public audience