The British royal family is experiencing problems in recent weeks. Not only do they have to deal with King Charles III's cancer, and everything that it entails, but with the serious crisis that has been generated by the secrecy surrounding Kate Middleton's state of health. Last January, Prince William's wife had to undergo abdominal surgery about which nothing is still known.
A controversy that has been aggravated by the scandal of the edited photograph of the Princess of Wales. And Middleton has been hiding from the media spotlight until she decided to publish a family portrait on the princes' official Instagram. What was not expected is that users would analyze the image millimetrically and discover that it was "manipulated." Given this, the UK press has been very categorical.
One of the British newspapers that have been most forceful with everything that happened is the Daily Mail. "Isn't it important that the Royal Family and their henchmen are authentic and transparent in all their dealings with the public and the press, given that we all pay for their palaces and their privacy?", they have published, making clear their exhaustion with the latest events.
This contrasts with the first reactions of the press as soon as they received the photograph. "The radiant princess with her three children," said the same medium. Praise to which others such as The Sun or Mirror also joined. However, it seems that the perception of the country's Royal House could be changing.
As BBC journalist Helen Wade explained on the TardeAR program, "the press was very angry when they discovered that the photo was digitally retouched." And if there is something they cannot understand, it is that they add "mystery" to this problem when all they wanted was to congratulate Mother's Day with that image: "They have done it terribly."
Criticism joined by British journalist Liz Jones, who affirms that it is not Kate Middleton's fault, but rather the Palace's, which "treats the general public with disdain. They think we are all stupid."
Given all this, the British press itself has asked Kensington Palace for the original photograph in order to compare it with the published one. Piers Morgan, columnist for The Sun was one of them. Even so, everyone has received a negative response. "If they do not publish the original photo, the conspiracy theories they were trying to eradicate will get much worse...", the journalist said.
And this criticism from the media has been aggravated by the excuses of Kate Middleton herself. "Like many other amateur photographers, I occasionally experiment with editing," she said on Instagram. "I want to express my apologies for any confusion caused by the family photo we shared yesterday," she added.
Although many are grateful that the Princess of Wales accepted what happened, others do not give in. And this is the case of the photographer specialized in the British royal house, Arthur Edwards. "Everyone knows that even with simple Internet tools you can modify an image. But official photographs distributed by the Palace or Government should be irreproachable," he stated for The Sun.
Faced with this scandal that is going around the world, several of the country's most important agencies have decided to remove the photograph from their database. Reuters, AP, AFP, PA and Getty Images did not hesitate to distance themselves from this so as not to be splashed by controversy. Now, we just have to wait to see how Casa Real resolves this mess.
