The Monarchy as Thugs

King Charles III coronation ceremony. Photo: Gareth Cattermole

This is a very interesting news item that should intrigue Grouse Beater readers here and abroad. It concerns how the offices of the monarch control the message and the image. The former boss of SKY News, John Ryley, spills the beans and says British Television broadcasters, subservient and grovelling as ever, allowed the monarchy to edit and censor aspects of the coronation coverage. The royal spin doctors imposed “extraordinary restrictions” on covering King Charles III’s accession and went further.

This little snippit shines a light on the palace lie that Queen Elizabeth’s remark “I hope people will think very carefully about the future,” spoken to some strategically placed press hacks outside Crathie Kirk, was indeed a well rehearsed, deliberate last-minute intervention. This from a monarchy that boasts it never gets involved in politics.

Most adults with a mature perception would have recognised her remark as loaded. In David Cameron’s autobiography, Call Me, Dave, written when he had resigned as prime minister, “the Queen was “deeply troubled” by the prospect of Scotland leaving the United Kingdom. Inside Whitehall, there were discussions on whether she could somehow speak out against Scottish independence while remaining within the constitutional boundaries of neutrality,” (There’s that lie again “neutrality”.)

“Under a cloak of secrecy, the Cabinet secretary, Sir Jeremy Heywood, and the Queen’s private secretary, Sir Christopher Geidt, held talks to work out how she might express her concerns in a suitably coded way. The result was a remark overheard after a Sunday service in Crathie Kirk, the small church that the Royals attend when staying at Balmoral.”

The incident broke all convention, vomited all over Scotland’s Claim of Right, (which Charles later promised to respect) and was an insult to many Scots, or one might say, a dog whistle to the faithful. Today, it is regarded as an outrageous thing to have done. It has been no help to Charle’s acceptance as an honest monarch trying to bring radical changes to the royal processes.

So, what are the details? British television channels agreed to let Buckingham Palace censor television coverage of King Charles’s coronation, according to the former boss of Sky News. John Ryley, who stepped down in May after 17 years, said the monarchy imposed restrictions on channels covering this year’s ceremony, including demanding the “Orwellian” right to retrospectively ban footage after it had been broadcast.

Reading from an agreement between the palace and broadcasters marked “private and confidential”, he told an audience at the Steve Hewlett Memorial Lecture how the palace controlled coverage: “The royal spin doctors had the opportunity to censor any pictures from the coronation before they could be replayed on the day … And the royal spin doctors dictated which clips of the footage could be shown in future broadcasts in what they called with an Orwellian phrase: ‘a perpetuity edit’.”

Ryley’s decision to speak out has broken the omertà around the secret agreements between British television and the royal family over coverage of formal events. His comments confirm many details previously reported in the Guardian about how Buckingham Palace controlled coverage of Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral and King Charles III’s coronation.

This included a WhatsApp group where royal courtiers would tell senior editors at the BBC, ITN, and Sky News in real time if the royal family wanted specific pieces of footage removed from circulation.

Ryley told the audience in London the royal family regularly escaped scrutiny by broadcasters.

He said he regretted that Sky News made the “bad decision” to provide Prince Charles with a full list of questions before an interview with the future king in 2017: “If a viewer had interrogated us about whether that was entirely in keeping with our core values of being honest with our audiences it would have been hard to mount a robust defence. Imagine submitting a list of questions to a top politician or business leader. Maybe in a puppet state.”

In his speech – in memory of Hewlett, the broadcaster and writer who died in 2017 – he demanded more scrutiny of the royal family from British journalism, saying broadcasters were now “too supine … too incurious … too compliant” when it comes to the monarchy: “Topics such as why King Charles didn’t pay any inheritance tax on the fortune he inherited from his mother or the fact the Duchy of Cornwall doesn’t pay capital gains tax should be examined properly. The reporting needs to be far more rigorous.”

He also explained how Buckingham Palace reacts when journalists try to ask questions directly to royal family members: “You already know – perhaps you don’t – that spin doctors at the royal palaces freak out when a broadcast journalist doorsteps a member of the royal family. Haughty emails, phone calls, and even a summons for a head of news to a meeting can swiftly follow. I’ve experienced this treatment.”

Ryley also said that British news providers spent too long focusing on London-centric Westminster political intrigue rather than the impact of policies on the wider nations of the UK.

NOTES

John Ryley was born in Chelmsford,, Essex. He was a radio journalist from 1985 to 1987 at Invicta FM in Kent. From 1987 to 1989 he was a news trainee with the BBC, with Jeremy Vine. In late 1989 he worked as a producer on the BBC Nine O’Clock News (the programme moved in 2000). He also worked at The World at One. From 1990 to 1992 he was a news producer on the ITV News at Ten, becoming a programme editor from 1992 to 1995. Ryley joined Sky News in 1995.From 1995 to 2000 he was an executive producer, including for Sunrise, then from 2000 to 2006 he was an executive editor. He has been the head of Sky News since June 2006 until 12pm on the day of King Charles III’s Coronation in May 2023.. when he retired from broadcasting work.

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