Main Index

Index to articles on Granada Television's Diana: The Secrets Behind the Crash

FREE SPEECH in the media must be matched by responsible behaviour, but this seems to be increasingly ignored by ITV, which last night devoted its prime-time slot to an investigative documentary about a plot to murder Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed.
    From beginning to end, the programme, Diana: The Secrets Behind The Crash, did little but rehash the conspiracy theories that have been emanating from Dodi's father, Mohamed Al Fayed, and the Harrods press department.  Far from being an even-handed investigation, Granada's production set out to reach the somewhat incredible conclusion that part of the British establishment ordered the murder of the most popular individual in the country simply because she was having an affair with Arab playboy.
    If this wasn't such a serious matter, the whole thing would seem laughable and we would dismiss it as a direct broadcast from fantasyland.  But it is very serious.  Apart from being devastatingly inconsiderate to her two boys, ITV has yet again allowed its editorial judgment to take second place to the drive for ratings.  Only a month ago a Carlton investigation about heroin smuggling from Colombia, which was broadcast on the ITV network with similar claims about its investigative brilliance, was shown to contain five basic deceptions.
    Last night's documentary misled the audience in a more subtle way -- by airing the conspiracy theories of Mohamed Al Fayed without for one second seriously questioning the evidence for his claims, nor indeed his motive for making them.

    It seems to me incontrovertible that the way the rumours have been elaborated over the past nine months shows that the root motive has always been to absolve Al Fayed from any blame for the drunken behaviour of his chauffeur in the events leading to the Place D' Alma. 
    It is understandable that he wants to avoid this guilt, but this is no reason for allowing him to persuade us that the circumstances of the crash were more sinister than they appear.
    The crucial obstacle to the conspiracy theory -- which, when examined, is not a theory at all, but a succession of desperate and inconsistent claims -- is the blood alcohol readings from the body of the driver, Henri Paul.  There were three tests and each one confirmed that Paul had been drinking in the hours immediately before he took the wheel of the high-powered Mercedes.  The tests also revealed that he used a drug prescribed to suppress the symptoms of alcoholism.
    Last night's programme interviewed a friend of Paul's, who asserted that the driver had not been drinking and also produced evidence that there were high levels of carbon monoxide in Paul's blood at the moment of death. 
    Both elements were, of course, designed to unsettle the public's faith in the drink-driving solution.  It does the makers of the programme, Fulcrum Productions, no credit at all that it has so uncritically swallowed such unsubstantiated fantasy.
    Given his obvious motive in wanting to clear his driver's name, it is surprising how successful Al Fayed has been in promoting his line.
    This is mostly the fault of the French authorities, who have been lamentably slow in making public the results of Diana's autopsy and their analysis of the circumstances of the crash -- the speed of the car, the condition of the road surface, the camber of the road and the order of impacts.
    When released, all these rather mundane details will help establish an exact sequence of events.  Finally, an inquest will be able to hear the evidence and belatedly present its verdict to the British people.
    The trouble is that the delay has provided ample opportunity for Al Fayed and his Press people to spread damaging and hurtful rumours, which serve the dual purpose of absolving his driver of blame while at the same time attacking his bogeyman -- the British establishment.
    Instead of a rigorous questioning of motive, the film-makers went in search of supporting evidence, which included an interview with James Hewitt, whose ability to tell the truth has been in doubt ever since he revealed his affair with the Princess through the author Anna Pasternak, all along denying that he shared in any of the book's profits.
    Despite ITV's claims to be engaged in a serious investigation devoted to previously unexamined areas of the Princess's death, the programme was in fact designed as prime-time sensationalism and added little that was new and/or convincing to the reservoir of public knowledge.
    This dovetails well with Al Fayed's press strategy.  Rather than aiming his rum ours at an educated middle market, he has deliberately sought out a less questioning audience in the red top tabloids.
    He is trying to tap into the huge well of feeling and opinion which surfaced in the week of mourning last September.
    Significantly, a request for an interview from a Dispatches programme which will be broadcast to the smaller and more discerning audience of Channel 4 this evening, was turned down.

Presumably Al Fayed knew that he would face much tougher questions from the presenter Martyn Gregory, whose programme concentrates on the suffocating attention paid by Al Fayed to Diana before the crash and on the misleading statements from Harrods afterwards.
    Of course, Al Fayed deserves some sympathy.  He lost a beloved son.  Repeatedly turned down for a British passport without any explanation, it is not surprising that he has become obsessed by conspiracy theories involving the British establishment.

Adapted extract from Trial by Conspiracy

Continued overleaf