Princess Diana used to be called the queen of all media. However, she also had a problematic relationship with the press. The People's Princess loved to play with them but also disliked the intrusion whenever she felt it too much. There is even this one occasion when she lost her temper and questioned their presence in one event.
Queen Elizabeth II's former press secretary Dickie Arbiter revealed that the former Princess of Wales "courted the media" throughout her life. But, she also lost her temper on them and it happened a few months before her tragic death in 1997, Express reported.
In the 2013 Amazon Prime documentary Royalty Close Up: The Photography of Kent Gavin, famed royal photographer Kent Gavin recalled the time when she suddenly blew her lid. On a holiday vacation on Mohamed Al-Fayed's yacht in St Tropez, press photographers also hired their own boat and sailed next to Prince Charles' ex-wife to take pictures.
This made Princess Diana mad as she felt like it was a step too far to follow her out even onto the water. Gavin explained that they needed to have access to the mother-of-two at sea, so they had to hire a yacht.
"She was very upset about this, extremely unhappy, to the extent that she's coming over to ask 'why are you here?'" Gavin remembered. However, Princess Diana just ended up giving what the media wanted. She came down from her yacht, got in the boat with a life jacket, and rode on a jet ski with her youngest son, Prince Harry. She rode around and gave the press a set of pictures.
In a 2017 report by USA Today, it said that Princess Diana remained to be a media magnet. From 1980, when she came to be the potential wife of Princes Charles, to 1996, when they opted for divorce after 15 years of an unhappy marriage, she had a complicated relationship with the media.
She loved some of them but sometimes hated the many. She sometimes cared about what they would say about her, but there were also times that she would complain about them following her. There were also times when she would try to manipulate them to help her fight different battles.
"The relationship between Diana and the press was famously and fatefully symbiotic," British PR consultant and royal commentator Richard Fitzwilliamz said. In the end, the media was blamed for her death when she died in car racing, trying to avoid the paparazzi on motorbikes. Princess Diana's brother, Charles Spencer, even believed that "the press" killed her.
