TV News Reporters Remember the Death of Diana
Princess Diana courtesy NBC
August 31 will mark 10 years since Princess Diana of Wales died in a high-speed car crash in Paris. For weeks it was a major saga that consumed television news. Here's how some of the journalists who covered it remember the shocking tragedy.
Piers Morgan of America's Got Talent who was then the editor of England's Daily Mirror: I went out to dinner on the night she died. I got a call about 1 am U.K. time saying her car had been in an accident and that Dodi Fayed was hurt and Diana was OK. Then I got a call saying Dodi was dead. By then I realized this was a huge international news story. So I went to my office at the
Daily Mirror, we marshalled our team, and by 3:30 or 4 am we had 200 journalists in the newsroom. At 4 am I got a call from one of our journalists who was with British royal secretary Robin Cook, who had heard from the French ambassador that Diana was dead. I remember sitting back in my chair feeling a mixture of emotions. On a professional level, I thought this was going to be one of the biggest and most challenging stories I'd ever covered, not in the least because the early indications were that she had died in a car chase with paparazzi, and as a tabloid paper we would be blamed by many people for what had happened. On a personal level, I felt very sad that somebody unique and funny and charming and extraordinary and smart had been snuffed out in her prime.
Catherine Herridge was on the scene for Fox News Channel: I arrived in Paris from London just after 6 am. We drove from Charles DeGaulle airport to the crash site at the tunnel. It was the most amazing scene I had ever seen in my entire life. There were live satellite trucks everywhere. There were people streaming into the tunnel where the accident happened, and coming out of the tunnel carrying pieces of concrete from the pillars that had been damaged, like this very macabre souvenir hunt. The tunnel was closed off temporarily after the accident, but then the French reopened it very quickly. If that happened here in the U.S., that tunnel would have been hermetically sealed and closed for a week. But for some reason, the French decided they would reopen the tunnel immediately. By early the next morning it was open, and souvenir hunters were streaming into it. I always felt this hurt the investigation quite significantly. People were really walking away with pieces of evidence.
NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams reported on the death that night: I was very emotional - this was my girl. I was like a lot of red-blooded American males of that age. For a long time I had a huge crush on her from a safe distance. I felt for her and what life had become for her. As it started to sink in, it was all so surreal. I remember saying something like, "The mother of the future king of England has died," and I had to get a hold of myself. I couldn't believe it.
Herridge: There was a crowd outside the hospital. There were people up in those gorgeous French apartment buildings looking onto the street. As the hearse pulled away from the hospital to take her body back to Great Britain, people began applauding - sort of applauding her life. That to me was one of the most powerful moments. It was stunning to me. I had never seen that before.
Barbara Walters covered the funeral in London for ABC News: When Peter Jennings and I walked near Westminster Abbey, we saw people winding through the streets, crying. All the stores were closed. There was just this terrible grief that everyone seemed to share, including those of us who were there.
Morgan: The mood of the crowd changed quite quickly by the middle of the week from anti-paparazzi to anti-royal family because they appeared to be locked in Balmoral not caring. The flag wasn't flying at half-mast at Buckingham Palace. So we began at the newspaper to put pressure on the royal family to come down to London and meet the people, because the people were collectively suffering. I'd never seen an outpouring of grief like that for any single human being in my life.
Mark Phillips, London correspondent for CBS News: We thought there was something political going on. This was beyond the loss of a person and the death of a princess. There was something constitutional happening. Here was a carpet of flowers spreading for acres across Kensington Park. The emotion was genuine and large. The royal family allowed whatever sentiment people had about the way Diana was treated by them to vent itself through the week of mourning. But it was a mistake to try to translate it into politics, as some of us did at the time. In terms of making the royal family less ostentatious, none of that has happened.
Williams: I went over as a tourist two weeks later, and the flowers were still at St. James and the shrine was still up at Harrod's department store. I couldn't believe it. When Mother Teresa died, at the height of the mourning for Diana, and still didn't garner the coverage that Diana was getting, it taught me a further lesson about what our world had become.
Walters: She was such a force. She was so controversial. She was so beloved. Looking back, were we surprised at the attention? I don't think so. She was just an amazing historic figure. Here we are 10 years later, and you're still writing and talking about her.
