Over 36 years, The Independent’s approach to royal coverage has evolved

Covering the death of the Queen in news, pictures and comment is not just a duty for a serious media outlet, it is also a responsibility, writes David Lister

While we aimed some barbs at the younger royals, The Independent was never disrespectful to the Queen (PA)

At the crack of dawn on Sunday morning, I stood in Westminster Hall to see the Queen’s lying-in-state. That would have seemed a very surreal thought back in 1986 at The Independent’s launch.

In August of that year, two months before the official launch (and with the Queen less than halfway through her reign), I sat in the home editor’s garden, with a few other members of staff, debating our policy on, among other things, how we were to treat the royal family.

We decided we would give it far less space than our rivals, and the paper soon gained a reputation for doing exactly that – delighting many readers, and probably puzzling others. Andreas Whittam Smith, the founder editor, said we had “a tinge of republicanism” and that we should “avoid fawning coverage”.

As a founder member of The Independent, and still working here, I have seen the policy and our attitude towards the royals “evolve” considerably, and for good reason.

One has to remember that back in 1986, the royal family was at peak soap opera (or so we thought), with a penchant for the trivial. The younger royals were soon to appear on BBC1’s It’s a Knockout, and The Independent was able to claim some high ground in ignoring the sillier aspects of the royal family then.

Times changed, and Princess Diana’s Panorama interview and then her tragic death made the royal family a serious subject for a quality paper. The nation was gripped, and hugely affected, and so were we. No longer were royal stories banished to the News in Brief column, which is where the birth of one of Prince Andrew’s daughters was placed. We looked at constitutional matters, we looked at their finances, we looked at their lives.

Yes, we argued that the family should be slimmed down, but that is a view that the new King Charles and the new Prince of Wales have both latterly held.

And while we aimed some barbs at the younger royals, The Independent was never disrespectful to the Queen. As the print edition ended and our online offering became a global media force, we attracted large numbers of readers in the US. Their interest in the royal family was arguably just as intense as that of our UK audience, and this provoked further enhancement of our coverage, with events such as the weddings of Prince William to Catherine and Prince Harry to Meghan being fully and instantly reported.

And now, of course, it would be both impossible and wrong to ignore a nation in mourning and the astonishing 70-year reign of the Queen. The pageant, the spectacle and the grief at a monarch’s passing are different and distinct aspects of Britain.

Covering these events, in news, pictures and comment, is not just a duty for a serious media outlet, it is also a responsibility – a responsibility to understand and explain the state of the nation.

Yours,

David Lister

Weekend editor of The Independent’s Daily Edition, and founder member of The Independent