A year ago on August 31 thousands of people poured into the heart of London to mourn Diana. In the silence at Kensington Palace gardens on August 31 this year, you could hear the not so distant whistles of festivity. The over one million people who clogged the streets of London on Monday were headed not for the Princess's home but for the Notting Hill Carnival, the biggest street festival in Europe and the annual celebration of Britain's Caribbean community. It was party time: food, floats, music, dance and deafening whistles.Last year duty dragged me to Kensington Palace. This year I went to Notting Hill via Kensington Palace. It was obvious where the action was. Under the cloud of barbecue and marijuana smoke feet were stamping, hips swinging. DJs dangled above 10-foot speakers and old women dressed as butterflies floated past. Many years ago, the then unknown Pink Floyd performed at Powis Square in Notting Hill.Compared with the Carnival, the first anniversary of Diana's death was a non-news event.This city was swinging, not standing still. There were flowers and poems and teddy bears at Kensington Palace. But there were no ten thousands. The people who gathered were loyal royalists (a shrinking club), the Diana fan club and TV crews. But the cameras which last year carried the so-called unburdening of Britain - the loosening, as it were, of its stiff upper lip - to the world outside, had nothing to report. Even the BBC, which had suspended regular programmes last year, relegated the first anniversary report to third place in its main news bulletins.Why was the first anniversary of what the media last year described as a turning point in the political and emotional history of Britain such a non-event? The answer perhaps lies in why Princess Diana's death was such a mega media event. There are times, too often these days, when the truth as it happens and truth as it is reported in the press are not quite the same. To quote the cliche, the media is in the business of inventing news. Last year, therewas an overwhelming sense that the media was inventing a reality: Diana the people's princess, an icon for a modern Britain which was more in touch with its emotions and was unified in mourning. In that clamour anything else anyone might say was drowned out.But last year, talking to the hundreds who waited to leave their flowers or sign the book, this was only one of a dozen different stories I heard about what brought people on to the streets, to queue for hours to sign a book. There were, of course, the genuinely hysterical who felt they had lost someone they knew well (courtesy the tabloids). This group was extremely well represented in the international coverage of Diana's death. They, with the political pundits sitting inside TV studios, were the news story. But there were as many or perhaps more who said that they had been impelled to "do something" because it felt like a great national event. Many people, especially after the first day, said that sitting at home in front of the TV watchingcontinuous coverage of people queuing in London made them feel excluded. None of these people, nor the millions who did not mourn, made it to the TV screens or newspaper front pages.Over the last year, however, there have been a litany of complaints that the media's portrayal of national mourning was unrepresentative of the nation. Opinion polls have talked of Diana fatigue, and the instant sainthood granted to the Princess has been openly questioned. There is an acceptance that those who visit Diana sites tend to be the sort of people who visit Graceland. The media's low-key approach to the anniversary is an indication that it has been forced to take this on board. More to the point: news editors know that there is no story, whichever way you spin it.
