EUROPE : Media Warned as Prince Goes Off to School: Have Some Class

The Royal Family has been grist for the media’s mill. But as 13-year-old Prince William, the second in line to the British throne, prepares to enter the prestigious Eton School, word has come from John Wakeham, chairman of the Press Complaints Commission: Lay off!

The prince must be allowed to enjoy his school days “free from the fear of prying cameras,” said Wakeham, whose commission, a government agency established in 1991, is charged with enforcing codes of journalistic practice.

Wakeham hinted that if the media invade Prince William’s privacy at school, the government might be forced to pass Draconian laws restricting press freedom in matters concerning invasion of privacy.

“Prince William is not an institution, nor a soap star nor a football hero,” Wakeham said. “He is a child.”

The royal heir “must be allowed to make mistakes and learn the way we all did--without reading consistently of his successes and failures in the columns of our newspapers.”

William, known in his family as “Wills,” is described by palace reporters as even more shy than his younger brother, Harry, and more disturbed by the breakup of the marriage of his parents, Prince Charles and Princess Diana.

Wakeham said William “must be allowed to grow up away from a constant and intrusive glare.”

Wakeham in effect barred journalists from interviewing or photographing the prince at school and from asking other children about him without permission from school authorities or the other students’ parents.

For many years, the Royal Family and its representatives at Buckingham Palace tended to dismiss invasions of privacy with a stern “no comment.” More recently, the palace has been objecting to reports that it feels violate the family’s privacy.

When Prince Charles was a boy, he attended Gordonstoun, a remote private institution in Scotland that was off limits to most media. But even there, much was made of the fact that Charles, on an excursion into town, drank a sip of cherry brandy as a lark. The tabloids reported that incident on their front pages.

A Buckingham Palace representative described Wakeham’s position on William as “welcome and necessary.” But it remains to be seen whether the British press, ravenous for news of the Royal Family, will allow William’s privacy to be preserved at Eton--Britain’s poshest private school and one selected by his mother.

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“Our readers share the country’s fascination in the development of a young man who will one day be our king,” said Piers Morgan, editor of the salacious, best-selling News of the World. “I am sure that we and other newspapers will be able to record aspects of that development in a responsible manner.”

Liverpool Echo Editor John Griffith, spokesman for the Guild of Editors, said, “William is hardly the average child and cannot expect newspapers not to be interested in his teen-age years.”

And Jacob Ecclestone, head of the National Union of Journalists, accused Wakeham of acting as a public-relations adviser for the Royal Family.

Other journalists said some tabloids are already offering William’s future schoolmates money to act as correspondents at Eton.