ITN and the Daily Mirror claiming first bragging rights in a story which is set to dominate the news agenda for the next year – the forthcoming wedding of Prince William to Kate Middleton.
Well connected ITV news political editor Tom Bradby, former royal correspondent for the broadcaster, bagged the first post-engagement interview with couple which was broadcast on an ITV news special at 7pm last night. His wife Claudia is understood to be a friend of Kate’s.
The interview transcript was made available to all news media and the video of it was pooled to other broadcasters with a 7pm embargo.
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Meanwhile, the Daily Mirror today boasted that it predicted a summer wedding for the pair with an exclusive story by Richard Smith on 19 October headlined: “HEIR COMES THE BRIDE”.
It remains to be seen whether their other prediction, that the wedding will be declared a public holiday, proves correct.
The Mirror boasted today: “Others have made a small industry out of wrongly predicting the nuptials, we chose to get our facts right.”
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And editor Richard Wallace said in a statement: “There has been a lot of speculation over a long period by other less well-informed newspapers, but we preferred to wait until we had the real story. It’s a great result for Richard.”
Fleet Street journalists will leave no stone unturned now to get ahead of their rivals on this story. Back in 1981 when Charles and Diana tied the knot the Daily Mail memorably employed a lip-reader to watch the TV footage to give it some exclusive quotes from the wedding party.
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