A new Channel 4 documentary untangles the conspiracies around the Princess of Wales’ death 25 years ago
The early theories that emerged in the months following Princess Diana’s death spread like wildfire on the comment section of the CNN website and Yahoo chat rooms, says Fred Henson, assistant producer on the series who spent hours trawling archives. One forum in particular that added fuel to the fire, says Henson, was Usenet, a forum that predated the World Wide Web.
In fact, these theories became so prevalent that an investigation, Operation Paget, was set up to directly take them on and forensically dismantle them. “The primary purpose of Operation Paget,” reads the 832-pagepublished after the investigation, “was to assess any credible evidence that supported the allegation of conspiracy to murder, not to re-investigate the issues looked at by the French investigation”.
“It was very clear, from the very beginning, that this whole thing was about transparency,” says Douglas. “If you’re dealing with conspiracy allegations, you have to shine a bright light on everything, you can’t take things away, because then it just becomes a conspiracy.” But equally, this type of investigation had never happened before.
But why, almost two decades later, does this fascination with conspiracy theories around her death persist online? The Covid-19 pandemic could be partly to blame, says Karen Douglas, professor of social psychology at the University of Kent. “[Conspiracy theories] appeal to people more in times of crisis. This is possibly one reason why conspiracy theories seem more prominent since the onset of the pandemic.
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