When Prince Philip died last Friday, it was a moment the world’s media had long been waiting for — the Duke of Edinburgh, 99, had been looking particularly cadaverous for months, if not years. The obits were ready — though, as Charlie Lewis reports in Tips and Murmurs today, some were missing vital facts, and others had some embarrassing typos.
Still, the death of Philip — husband of the Queen, World War II veteran and a man who spent most of his time in the public eye going around with a foot firmly in his mouth — brought forward a frenzy of media activity over the weekend. For a man whose main contribution to recent Australian public life was accelerating the downfall of an unpopular prime minister and getting CV-stacking high schoolers to go camping, it all seemed a bit much.
Sycophantic coverage
Over the weekend, TV networks rolled out the big guns for their coverage of the duke’s long-awaited demise. On the ABC, as well as the commercial channels, star programmers returned to work a weekend shift, adding a bit of gloss to coverage that was pretty much wall-to-wall.
The newspapers dutifully followed suit, marking the duke’s passing with pages of misty-eyed hagiography. For the Nine newspapers, Royals Europe correspondent Bevan Shields produced a staggering 6500-plus words of copy on Philip over the weekend, without a single mention of the duke’s long history of antiquated, racist, sexist mutterings.
At least The Australian had a crack — documenting some of Philip’s greatest hits in an article headlined “Goodbye and thanks for all the gaffes”. That’s quite a way to describe the duke’s musings — including telling British students in China they’d get “all slitty-eyed” if they stayed around too long, or asking Indigenous leaders in Australia if they still threw spears.
How did Australia stack up?
In Britain, the BBC’s own wall-to-wall coverage of his death was met with backlash. As TV ratings fell, the public broadcaster was forced to set up a new website to deal with the deluge of complaints it was receiving for wasting too much time on the Duke of Edinburgh’s demise.
Here in Australia, there was a slightly more muted outpouring of rage, concentrated largely among viewers of British crime show Vera, which had its broadcast stopped to cut to news of the duke’s death.
The broadcaster received about 200 official complaints, and plenty more on social media. It even set up a (now defunct) link on its help site for viewers trying to watch Vera.
How did Australia’s seemingly endless weekend of Philip stack up with the rest of the Commonwealth? In New Zealand and Canada, Jacinda Ardern and Justin Trudeau both offered the kinds of glowing tributes one would expect.
And like Australia, both countries are sending off the Duke of Edinburgh with a 41-gun salute. Still, by Monday, major news outlets in both countries were easing off their Philip coverage, with only a handful of stories halfway down various homepages.
But there’s one thing Australia has in the Philip stakes that the rest of the Commonwealth doesn’t: Tony Abbott. The former prime minister’s monarchism was, famously, so blindly ardent he brought back knighthoods and gave one to Prince Philip.
It was the captain’s call that would begin the unravelling of Abbott’s leadership. Over the weekend, Abbott, who said the world felt “a little emptier” without the duke, wrote an opinion piece in The Daily Telegraph explaining why he was correct to give out the knighthood.
But the fawning response to the Duke of Edinburgh’s death went well beyond Abbott. Philip was a man whose commitment to uttering a dying empire’s quiet parts out loud was truly stunning. The way he’s being remembered makes a republic seem very far off.
For a different perspective (even though it’s rather insensitive and possibly a bit too soon) try The Irish Times …
‘Having a monarchy next door is a little like having a neighbour who’s really into clowns and has a house daubed in clown murals, displays clown dolls in each window and has an insatiable desire to hear about and discuss clown-related news stories. More specifically, for the Irish, it’s like having a neighbour who’s really into clowns and, also, your grandfather was murdered by a clown.
‘Beyond this, it’s the stuff of children’s stories. Having a queen as head of state is like having a pirate or a mermaid or Ewoks as head of state. What’s the logic? Bees have queens, but the queen of the Britons has laid just four British eggs and one of those is the sweatless creep Prince Andrew, so it’s hardly deserving of applause.’
That’s a very different way to write about The Firm …
From the ABC’s coverage on Friday one would have thought Tony Abbott was still PM. In a way perhaps he still is? Throwing hours of coverage at the event, with major names dragged back from the weekend, was one thing. However, running those hours and hours on both the main channel and the 24 News channel simultaneously was either ludicrous, sycophantic or both. That an ABC constantly cut since Abbott would swarm at this high conservative story was both ironic and testament to the success of the strong arm policy of the government. Meanwhile, for those alert to it, the Vera cut off and left stranded was available on iview.
Having the coverage simultaneously on ABC1 & ABC24 was overkill & unnecessary. I deduced that the obituaries had been ready for years & so many journalist hours had been spent on them that the ABC opted to exact maximum airtime hours for dollars invested.
But it was abysmal programming to interrupt ‘Vera’. I, too, resorted to iView.
Agree. Really disgusting. Getting in Annabelle Crabbe to fawn over the Duke and the royal family. Correspondent Phillip Williams came in and told us even we ‘republicans’ had to acknowledge his years of public service, whatever that means. It was explained how the people offended by the Duke’s comments in the past, weren’t really that offended and on and on and on and on and on it went…
Haven’t seen this much hand-wringing by the ABC since the Alberici affair, the Cabinet Papers, the sourcing of Gerard Henderson, Andrew Bolt, Paul Kelly as serious commentators on… anything, and all the times before that.
Off course Tony Abbott isn’t the Prime Minister dumbo – Malcolm Turnbull is. Ask the ABC
The wall-to-wall coverage with minimal mention of his faults – not to mention the monarchy’s role in the class system and colonialism – felt like censorship to some degree, as if people who dislike royalty or were uninterested in them were not allowed to comment. There is no reason for the North Korea treatment when such people die; why can’t the media give a balanced coverage? Would be more interesting, for a start.
he’s dead?!
I noticed that the Guardian’s live blog opening post was written 7 weeks earlier – around about the time he entered hospital.
Anyway, one fewer old racist in the world.