The Prince of Wales is reportedly ‘livid’ at Prince Harry’s ‘antagonistic’ use of Princess Diana’s Panorama footage in his Netflix series, a royal expert has claimed.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s Harry & Meghan series features a number of clips of their mother’s account of her marriage collapse from her 1995 interview with BBC rogue reporter Martin Bashir.
Vanity Fair’s Katie Nicholl told Ok! that Harry has ‘monopolised’ Diana’s story, saying: ‘[William] will be livid. William has campaigned for that footage to never be screened again, so for it be used in his brother’s own reality TV show will be very frustrating for William.
Just before the footage is shown, Prince Harry tells interviewers: ‘I think we all now know that she was deceived into giving the interview but at the same time she spoke the truth of her experience.’
The documentary went on to repeatedly broadcast clips from the BBC programme to draw comparisons between Diana and Meghan’s experiences of life in the royal family.
Claiming Meghan came under fire for attracting press attention, the series cuts to clips of Diana talking about the ‘jealousy’ which came with her popularity.
BBC director-general Tim Davie last year insisted that the interview would never be shown again because of the ‘shocking’ way it was obtained.
He also pledged that the Corporation would not license its Panorama footage ‘in whole or part to other broadcasters’.
It was learnt that Netflix did not need to obtain the BBC’s permission to use the clips and instead used an exception within copyright law called ‘fair-dealing’.
Under this arrangement, a broadcaster can legitimately use short clips of another organisation’s work to report on ‘current events.’
Experts say they simply have to ensure the footage has been previously broadcast to the public, that not too much footage is used and that they acknowledge who the owner is.
The ‘BBC Motion Gallery’ is listed as the source of archival material in the closing credits of the first episode of the Netflix documentary.
