So much has happened in the Royal Family over the past few months, that I completely forgot about that time that Harry posted a picture of an elephant on Instagram, which got the tabloids all worked up.
The photo, taken in Malawi, first appeared in a 2016 press release from Kensington Palace about Harry’s trip there and his work with elephant conservation.
It was then reposted to @sussexroyal, Meghan and Harry’s Instagram account, last year, on Earth Day. In the photo, a man is seen reaching out to the elephant. In the original picture, you can see that the elephant had a rope around its leg.
The post on Instagram referred to the project Harry was working on, which aimed to relocate hundreds of elephants to conservation parks. It doesn’t mention that the elephants were tranquillised and tethered.
Although I don’t know how else you’d safely relocate an elephant.
The pictures, before (with rope)…
…and after (the rope has been cropped out).
Moving on to what happened next.
Here’s The Daily Mail:
The Duke of Sussex complained to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) saying the [Mail on Sunday] had breached Clause 1 of its Editors’ Code of Practice, ‘Accuracy’, regarding the article published on April 28 last year.
Harry had posted wildlife pictures on the Sussex Royal Instagram page [which were] used by The Mail on Sunday for a story with the headline: ‘Drugged and tethered… what Harry didn’t tell you about those awe-inspiring wildlife photos’.
It was reported that the images ‘don’t quite tell the full story’ as they did not show the rope around the back legs of one of the pictured elephants, adding that the complainant ‘notably avoided explaining the circumstances in which the images were taken’.
Harry said that the article was inaccurate because it implied that he deliberately mislead the public by cropping the photo. Keep in mind that unedited versions of these pictures had been widely circulated in 2016, so no one was trying to hide anything.
However, IPSO found that the images could have been edited differently on Instagram, and that the Duke did not make it sufficiently clear that unedited versions of the photos were available elsewhere.
In these circumstances, the Committee did not consider that it was significantly misleading to report that the photographs posted on the complainant’s Instagram account did not quite tell the full story and that the complainant had not explained the circumstances in which the photographs had been taken.
‘There was no breach of Clause 1.’
So, Harry lost that one. He’ll get another chance to take on The Mail on Sunday soon when he and Meghan go to court to fight them over the letter from Meghan’s dad, which the tabloid published without her permission.
I have a feeling that the royal couple’s battle with the press is just beginning.
[source:dailymail]
