News Digest

William and Kate: Paparazzi must stop harassing our children

Kensington Palace has accused paparazzi photographers of harassing Prince George, saying the royal toddler had become their “number one target” and accusing them of going to “extreme lengths” to get pictures of him. In an unusually strongly worded open letter, Jason Knauf, the communications secretary of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, said the tactics used by some photographers were creating a “very real security risk”. And he said their actions, which included using other children to draw Prince George into view in playgrounds, had left William and Kate “concerned about their ability to provide a childhood for Prince George and Princess Charlotte that is free from harassment and surveillance”.

It is of course upsetting that such tactics… are being deployed to profit from the image of a two-year-old boy. In a heightened security environment such tactics are a risk to all involved. The worry is that it will not always be possible to quickly distinguish between someone taking photos and someone intending to do more immediate harm.

Extract from the open letter

The hard-hitting letter detailed a series of incidents involving paparazzi including one last week when a photographer set up a “hide” in his car with sheets and supplies of food and drink as he staked out a play area. Other incidents included photographers pursuing cars leaving family homes, surveillance of the Berkshire home of the duchess’s parents, Carole and Michael Middleton, hiding in dunes to take photos of Prince George playing with his grandmother and hiding on private property in fields and woodland around the duke and duchess’s home in Norfolk. In the letter, Mr Knauf said the royal couple had “expressed their gratitude to British media organisations for their policy of not publishing unauthorised photos of their children”