The Press: The Cobweb Curtain

At the height of Princess Margaret's off-again, on-again romance with Peter Townsend last year, Britain's Sunday Pictorial burst out with a Page One headline: FOR PETE'S SAKE, PUT HIM OUT OF HIS MISERY. Last week the British Press Council roundly deplored such instances of "coarse impertinence." It cited as another example of "bad taste and worse manners" the Daily Mirror's headline on the same romance:

COME ON MARGARET!

PLEASE MAKE UP YOUR MIND

The council also took note of the increasingly strained relations between the royal family and Britain's newspapers, took both sides to task for this state of affairs. It suggested "an improvement...

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