Harry, William: Don't Use Mom's Photos

June 5, 2007 — -- In a rare public move, Britain's Prince Harry and Prince William are speaking out this morning to stop the use of graphic, never-before-seen images from the site of Princess Diana's death.

The British TV station Channel 4 will broadcast the photographs taken in the tunnel just minutes after Diana's fatal 1997 car crash. One photo shows a French doctor giving Diana oxygen as she lie dying in the wreckage.

Channel 4 calls this one of the most terrible and iconic moments of the 20th century. For William and Harry, it's more personal: It's the night their mother died.

In a private letter to Channel 4 the princes' secretary wrote, "If it were your or my mother dying in that tunnel, would we want the scene broadcast to the nation?"

Network executives were unmoved. They didn't reply to the letter, but confirmed this morning that "Diana: The Witnesses in the Tunnel" will air Wednesday night as planned and unedited.

"They would go ahead with it. They've had a lot of publicity about it. There's been a media furor," said Dickie Arbiter, a former spokesman for the royal family. "It's all about ratings. Channel 4 will do exactly what it wants to do."

This morning the princes hit back. They went public, a rare move for the royal family. They called the decision "a gross disrespect to their mother's memory."

In death, as in life, their mother, Diana, is arguably one of the world's most recognizable women.

"They see images of their mother almost every day in the newspapers," Arbiter said, "so they're never going to get away from it."

But William and Harry hope to get away from the morbid curiosity that surrounds her death. Conspiracy theories and speculation still swirl around the crash that killed Diana and her friend Dodi al Fayed nearly 10 years ago.

There is an official inquiry into the crash scheduled for later this year, and today Channel 4 says it is broadcasting the harrowing images because there is legitimate public interest.