slutet på sagan prinsessan dianas död i press, radio och tv

was responsible. The accident was the
tragic end of a long media fairy tale.
Prior to the Princess’s funeral – the date
of which was set five days in advance – the
Swedish media had plenty of time to prepare
their coverage. Various Swedish
media sent their own reporters and photographers
to London. The relatively great
space devoted to the funeral could be
partly explained by the good access to
material – both that produced by individual
Swedish news desks and that available
via international and national news
and picture agencies. Another part of the
explanation is that the funeral marked the
summation of the saga of Diana – the
person and the princess.
The funeral came to represent a dramatic
unravelling where all concerned parties
were gathered and held accountable.
All threads of the story were tied together,
and the resultant picture gave at least the
illusion of a funeral marking not only the
end of a woman’s life, but also of a rigid
and obsolete monarchy – but not yet of the
British monarchy – as well as the illusion
that a “reconciliation” between the British
royal family and the British people was
possible.
In the Swedish media, Princess Diana’s
death received the most attention (in terms
of both number of articles and space) in
the evening papers, Aftonbladet, Expressen
and GT. In this case, the pictures occupied
more space than did the text. In the
four morning newspapers, the relationship
between text and pictures was the
opposite.
Of the television programmes studied,
TV2’s Rapport broadcast the most features
on, and devoted the most time to,
Princess Diana. The subject received the
least amount of space in TV4’s Nyheterna.
Rapport and Aktuellt together presented
almost four times as much material (mea-
164
sured in broadcast time) on the Princess’s
death than did Nyheterna. Ekot’s coverage
(measured in broadcast time) was comparable
with that of Rapport, but constituted
a lesser proportion of total broadcast
time – hardly one-fifth.
The greatest proportion of articles and
features in the studied media were news
reports on current developments. Features
in Sveriges Television’s Rapport and
Aktuellt and Sveriges Radio’s Ekot also
included commentary and analysis, but
this type of reporting was not found in
TV4’s Nyheterna. In the newspapers, a
non-trivial share of articles consisted of
commentary, chronicles, editorials and
analyses; altogether, this was true of about
one-fifth of the morning papers and slightly
more than one-tenth of the evening
papers.
Across all of the studied media, the same
aspects of Princess Diana’s death were
given primary attention in the reports
made during the week after the accident.
Reporting mostly dealt with the media’s
responsibility, people’s mourning and the
funeral. Accounts in the form of a kind of
personal portrait of Princess Diana were
frequent and allotted a relatively large
proportion of the total space. Those aspects
given the least amount of space in the
reporting were accounts of Princess
Diana’s friend Dodi al-Fayed and his family
background, as well as information
on the accident’s more long-term consequences
for the Princess’s bodyguard and
the photographers involved in the accident.
The category of actors found most often
in the Swedish media was the British royal
family/court, either in their capacity as
statement sources or referents. Accordingly,
photographers and journalists as well
as the public were among the actors found
quite frequently. Moreover, in the evening