The highly paid PR specialists Prince William has brought into his private office at Kensington Palace need to put an end to the social media conspiracy theories about the Princess of Wales’s health.
Having failed to stop the fake photo fiasco – an appalling own goal that should have prevented – they are now flailing about ineffectively while a tsunami of rumour and speculation about the state of the Princess’s health breaks relentlessly on social media.
Just as nature abhors a vacuum, so a news vacuum is immediately filled with scurrilous nonsense and vile innuendo, none of it helpful to the Princess as she slowly recovers from major abdominal surgery two months ago.
The only way to stem the flood of nasty conjecture about the Princess’s chances of making a full and timely recovery is to have a plan – and that seems to be sadly missing at present.
Briefing chosen, trusted individual journalists that the Princess will disclose what has been wrong with her at some unspecified future date – when she has recovered and is meeting the public informally – simply will not do.
In the past, she has not been coy about her health. After she was admitted to hospital with severe morning sickness before the birth of Prince George, she was candid about what she had suffered, in the interest of helping other women who may have experienced the same symptoms but also to be as straightforward as possible, knowing people had been concerned about her.
As the Princess has herself acknowledged, she enjoys tremendous public goodwill. It is time for a proper briefing, on the record, if only to shut down the rumour mills that will keep on turning in the absence of authoritative information, drafted at KP and signed off by the Princess after consulting her doctors. In other words, an official health bulletin.
People are not just understanding, they are sympathetic and will be endlessly supportive if they are permitted to know – even in general terms – what the Princess is coping with as she struggles to regain her health while bringing up three young children as a very much hands-on mum.
Joining the modern age, KP must put this official bulletin on its own internet platforms so that every other medium that actually aims for factual accuracy and has a respect for the truth can no longer get away with retailing half-baked theories and loony speculation.
Meanwhile, it would be the greatest folly for the PR people at Kensington to respond in any way to the rubbish on the internet and in foreign publications that have no information, no sense of responsibility and less compassion that a tiger leaping upon an injured lamb.
Michael Coles is the former BBC TV Royal Correspondent
