REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK: Did We Truly Know Diana's Life Before Her Tragic Death?

Sept. 13, 2006 — -- When you look into the rearview mirror of a car, you often see a tiny notice at the bottom that says, "Beware, objects behind you may be closer than they seem."

In other words, your sense of space is distorted in order for you to get a panoramic view of what's behind.

When looking in the rearview mirror of the Princess Diana story, with all of its sensational ups and downs over the years, I get the sense that we rarely saw the Diana we thought we were seeing.

She was in a rarified world; thus, her headlights were farther away than they seemed. But they burned so brightly that we felt she was virtually in the cars with us. So much so, that millions reacted to her death in Paris in 1997 as though they had been in the rear seat with her when her car crashed.

But she had always taken her public on a wild ride. From the fairy-tale princess, to the neglected wife, to the girlfriend of Egyptian playboy, Dodi Al-Fayed, Diana dominated the British tabloids.

I remember in the weeks leading up to her death, Diana was widely portrayed by the media as slightly off the rails. The Fayed family was, after all, not part of the British Establishment.

The day after she died, I spent 14 hours reporting from Kensington Palace, interviewing hundreds of her fans who came to lay flowers or say a prayer.

Many shouted or hissed that the media had hounded her to her death. This was not just a reference to reports that her car had been chased at high speeds by photographers.

Mourners also said the media were to blame for lurid stories that drove Diana into despair, and possibly made her flee to Paris where she was killed.

"Especially those awful tabloids," shouted tearful Di supporters. I asked each person what paper he or she had bought. The most common answer was a tabloid.

No one seemed to connect themselves to the fact that media sensationalism cannot survive without their support. There seems, instead, to be a notion that they have no choice but to read what they denounce as rubbish.