#Danish #court #scores #goal #betrays #prince
According to Sara Mitchell-Malm, the Danish court is making a self-imposed goal.
Photo: Johan Nilsson/TT / TT NEWS AGENCY
All the Danish weekly Billed-Bladet wanted was to show that Prince Christian, a relative newcomer both as an 18-year-old and crown prince, is now also a car driver.
They published pictures of the crown prince in a silver BMW, and described the royal hand on the wheel as “safe”, according to Danish Ekstrabladet.
A few hours later, Billed-Bladet’s editor-in-chief receives a call from the court’s communications manager and is scolded for notes. The court claims that the photos are “illegal” because they were taken “in a private sphere”, the editor-in-chief later told the newspaper.
The alleged “private sphere” is thus the royal castle Amalienborg, which is owned by the Danish state.
Billed-Bladet feels compelled to take down the article, but it doesn’t take long for their sister newspaper Se og Hør to also publish the photos – where upon closer inspection they discover that the prince appears to be driving without a seat belt, in violation of Danish law.
Maybe the image of Christian behind the wheel had just floated by in the feed, maybe not.
But the court’s behavior guaranteed that this would not be the case.
It is unclear what outcome the court envisioned when, on the eve of press freedom day, they called and threatened a newspaper with the long arm of the law. At the moment, they refuse to answer questions about both Christian’s belt habits and their own communication strategy.
Possibly they simply just wanted to protect a young person barely beginning to sniff out royal adulthood, and what that means in terms of media scrutiny.
But even though Christian may be a superior car driver and crown prince, the Danish court has been involved before – and it is their damned duty to be better than this.
