News from the New Party

Blowing Harry's cover

Now the world knows where Prince Harry has been for the past ten weeks and also that he won't be there much longer.  It is a remarkable achievement to get the British press to shut up about anything for ten weeks, and so the media in this country has been rightly praised for standing by its commitment to a news blackout on the Prince Harry's assignment in the best interests of himself and his colleagues.  And there is no doubt that the blackout was justified - complaints from some journalists that this deal protected the royal family unfairly ignore the fact that the prince's presence on the front line represents an additional risk to those serving alongside him.

In the meantime, opprobrium has been heaped upon the Australian women's magazine New Idea, a tabloid style journal with a remarkable appetite for coverage of the Royal Family (think Hello! but without the class), which has been blamed for leaking the story.  While this was undoubtedly a major blunder - the magazine's editor has claimed not to have known of any media blackout (which suggests that a name change to "No Idea" may be on the cards) - the most astonishing thing is that New Idea published the story on January 7  (i.e. seven weeks ago).  It has only come to wider attention since the widely read American news website The Drudge Report suddenly uncovered the story yesterday.

How can this be?  Well, however popular New Idea may be with female Australian royal-watchers, it is clearly not on the reading list of the U.K. Ministry of Defence, or for that matter the Taliban - for which we can all be profoundly grateful.  If only Matt Drudge had kept schtumm...