Sky broadcasts Diana injury shots | Media

Sky broadcasts Diana injury shots

Sky News has aired the controversial pictures of the late Princess Diana being given oxygen in the Mercedes at the scene of the Paris car crash that killed her.

On the day of the 10th anniversary of her death, the channel showed the distressing scene during a broadcast from US network CBS Evening News in the early hours of the morning.

The first photographs showed Diana in the car with no visible injuries while the second and third photographs showed Diana receiving treatment.

All three photographs are in black and white but are clearly of Diana, and in the last one she looks in distress.

They were shown during Sky's re-broadcast of the CBS Evening News, which is produced in New York.

The photos were shown midway through the news in a report that raised the possibility that Diana could have been saved if paramedics had followed US treatment procedures rather than French ones.

Unlike in Channel 4's recent documentary Diana: The Witnesses in the Tunnel, which contained a single image showing a doctor trying to fit an oxygen mask to Princess Diana's face, in which the whole of her head has been blocked out, in the CBS footage, her face can be seen.

In June, a row broke out over Channel 4's documentary after Princes William and Prince Harry asked the broadcaster not to air pictures of the crash that killed their mother and the aftermath.

Channel 4 defended the decision, saying a number of the more contentious pictures had already appeared elsewhere, including a BBC Panorama documentary and the front page of the Sun, and that the faces of the victims were never shown.

Most critics agreed the programme had dealt with the subject in a sensitive way and that the images were not as graphic as pre-transmission reports had suggested.

However, the CBS report shows Diana's face clearly.

Sky's broadcast prompted complaints from some viewers, who were not warned the pictures were being aired. One said: "There were no prior warnings on Sky News that the disturbing photos would be shown." The report is still running on the website of CBS News.

The news channel is not showing live coverage of the Diana memorial service today but is airing reports and tributes about the anniversary of her death.

The Princess Diana service of thanksgiving is however being aired on BBC1, BBC News 24, ITV1, CNN, Fox and EuroNews. Sky News decided not to pay to run the event.

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· If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication". The first photographs showed Diana in the car with no visible injuries while the second and third photographs showed Diana receiving treatment.

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