If anything, this was a sign of respect to the people of the U.K. by the media and the government. It would have been disrespectful to anyone who has fought in a war to have trotted out Harry as a token soldier, without giving him the chance to serve in a war zone.

The group that should be protesting loudest is the Taliban, who have missed an opportunity to rain hell down upon whatever British units they might have thought the prince was serving in. Fortunately for them, they’ll still be able to explode IEDs and strap suicide bombs to people. The media and the government can’t take that away from them, despite this conspiracy of silence.

The next step was then to decide how he could do this in the safest possible manner and this was just that. I don’t belive there was “colluding” going on, I belive it was a decision that needed to be made with secrecy to keep Harry safe and I feel the majority of Britons will understand and accept that!

As for the motive? I don’t think it’s as pure as you are willing to believe. Surely the ’safest’ course of action would have been not to send the Prince to the front line?

Look at the situation, this was not an act of betrayal to the British people or a cover-up, it was an act of responsibility and well done the British media for sticking to it!

I can see the dangers of gagging the press (it was Margaret Thatcher who used to say ‘you can’t have a free society without a free press’) but I interpreted this story differently. In this case, the media signed up for a voluntary ‘non-disclosure’ agreement. (BTW I strongly resisted these when I worked in PR consultancy because I doubted they would work and knew they weren’t enforceable.) So I was impressed the agreement held for fully ten weeks.

I think that MC’s beef is that he sees this a simple puff piece to rehabilitate the young man’s image. And that is an aspect that needs discussion, I agree. (MC’s probably just PO’d that they had the temerity to pull if off without his input.)

I freely admit that I make a living trying to influence the media. But I am not the government and I have never asked for a national news blackout.

They managed to gag the entire British fourth estate. If they did it once, what’s to say they won’t do it again?

Come on Richard, you have to admit that it’s a little bit scary, right?

I (and many others) are impressed that the media can show this restraint when the circumstances are explained to them (lives are at risk) and when there’s the carrot of access to dangle in front of them.

I’m sure you seek to work cooperatively with the media on behalf of your clients, so where’s the difference?

It’s also enlightening to look back and realise we didn’t miss the ‘party prince’ throughout the extended Christmas, New Year and Valentine’s period.