P Kharel

This is no pontification or sermonising but a fact of life: Facing the inevitability does not rob anyone of the ground reality, and death is one such prospect to members of any station in society and of any qualification.
After suffering some health complications recently, British Queen Elizabeth, 95, cancelled her scheduled visit to Northern Ireland and spent a night in hospital for undisclosed “preliminary investigations” before resuming official work, even if with reduced schedule.

The report caused concern among Britons who look forward to the 2022 Platinum Jubilee celebrations. The news media have been holding in-house meetings for planning the coverage for the event marking the queen’s 70 years on the throne.

More than that they also maintain extra vigilance as to how the death of their monarch should be covered. They are well aware that even the inevitable demise can toss up incidents for which many people might not be prepared. The state-patronised BBC, for instance, is reported to be planning the queen’s death since long.
Not only BBC but other news media also engage in similar preparations, including aspects like whom to assign what and where as well as who to be deputed for the central role at the solemn occasion.

Exhaustive exercise
When the monarch’s end comes, no preparations might come out completely successful to the minute detail. On such occasion, no mass media can bank on living off their past performance. Even if the initial audience draw might not be comparatively low, the marathon event will enable the mass audience to make out which channel—print/broadcast—offers the best.
On-air presenters are named for regular updates to script their way to deliver the best in terms of information, news angling, standups, running reportage as well as incidents and copious background material for appropriate usage in the narratives and commentaries.

Quotes, visits, duties, personalities, tastes, habits—a long range of aspects of the monarch’s life before and after ascending the throne seven decades will be recalled and discussed. The ageing queen, who holds the record the country’s longest reigning monarch, has coped with many a family crisis on the family front and at public platforms where royalty is discussed thread bare. But the British appetite for “some more” is loud and clear.
Intense media and public scrutiny emitting scorching attention might stray into individual privacy, especially when the focus of attention happens to be royalty. Speculation is only to be expected as to the successor and the ones to follow in the line of the royal duties.

Reports of the queen’s health pop up more often these days than previously, reminding her and Britons in general to be prepared for the most inevitable as well as subsequent transition as smoothly as possible. A practical option for the queen in to delegate some of her role to Prince Charles who welcomed world leaders to the COP26 climate summit in November. In a recorded video, the queen addressed the distinguished delegates in Glasgow.

That Prince Charles has already represented the queen on official visits overseas in a pointer to is enhanced role and duty. The royal successor begins to be more visible—a trend that can only be expected to grow in the days ahead. The onerous task of maintaining royal dignity and discharging the duties of the high office entails a relentlessly exacting engagement.

At the same time, activity within the wall of the various palaces, too, can get leaky, what with would-be-whistleblowers expected to grow in number and frequency in future.
Signing acts of parliament and granting audiences to the prime minister are categorised as core ceremonial constitutional functions. However, functions pertaining to Commonwealth matters, parliament’s dissolution and appointment of prime minister are not delegated.
Indisposition leads to activising the state counsellors of comprising the monarch’s spouse and the next four people in the line of succession who have attained the age of 21. The queen’s spouse, The Duke of Edinburgh, died in April at 99.

Royal admirers believe that the “magic of monarchy” is enhanced by being seen regularly in public. Things are changing—at first subtly, and now bit by bit as the body tires and ages for the final journey to eternal exit. That’s a crucial aspect for all—the big and the mighty.

Given the Queen’s aversion to the idea of abdicating, some quarters suggest that she could, at some point in time, reconcile to the option of a “co-head” assisting her in carrying out some of the most important core functions. She could every now and then attend virtual meetings, though being seen in flesh and blood adds to an event’s the significance.
Death defies anyone and anything in the entire universe. We are but fragile human species born to pass a process of mortal life with the inevitable hanging over our heads from birth to the last breath. Consequence of the unstoppable aging process is the certainty stamped by disease and death. Accidents, war and murder might fit in somehow, even if tragically.

Newsmakers
It is also an established fact that some deaths draw greater press and public attention than do other deaths. Newspapers since at least after World War I started building documentation and reference sections for adding to stories of success or deaths.

A journalist, who worked for a British news daily and later was a tutor to us diploma in journalism trainees in Britain, escorted us to visits to newspaper offices in London in the autumn of 1978. In the process, he recalled how newspapers in the 1960s laboured hard to issuing contingent plans for coverage of the “imminent” death of Winston Churchill, the wartime prime minister who was defeated in the first general elections after World War II but staged a comeback for one more stint as premier thereafter. But death took its own time to visit “poor Churchill”, and newspapers had to plan a standby dummy layout and design every night in case the inevitable happened in January 1965, at age 90, that is, nine days after suffering a stroke.

Individual journalists keep their own personal record files, which are dug up also when writing a book or piecing together investigative reports. It is their professional treasure trove for use no matter which news organisation they might migrate to in the course of their stints in career. In the course of individual ups and downs, the background material serves a story wholesome.

(Professor Kharel specialises in political communication.)