Was it? The “keep quiet” aspect seems clear enough; national security is generally accepted as a justification—and expedient—for self-censorship in the press, and it’s common practice to withhold information to protect the safety of those about whom they’re reporting. Some considerations trump the public’s right to know. But whether it was right to let Harry go in the first place is a different question—and, in some ways, a trickier one. The fact that the media made their agreement proactively—they weren’t holding back reporting on facts, but holding back reporting on the potential for facts—adds an extra “prior” to that classic Enemy of the Press, prior restraint. They could have stood on principle and refused the agreement; Harry wouldn’t have been deployed, which would have been sad for him, but which also would have prevented the need for news outlets to withhold information from their audiences. Satchwell’s claim that “it was an extraordinary and rare display of unity for national and regional newspaper and magazine editors and broadcasters not to report the story” is true enough, but it also has shades of conspiracy. So what changed, exactly, between the discussions of the Iraq deployment and the series that led to the Afghanistan blackout? (The media and military alike had to have realized, after all, that reports of the prince’s potential Iraq deployment would provoke threats to his life.) One has to wonder whether there’s something else at play, then—whether the same loyalty that led to the first “great silence” is also at the heart of its successor.

Take, again, today’s glowing stories about Harry’s service—which are, in their praise of Harry, fairly shocking. (This is the same prince, after all, who has been portrayed in the tabloid press fairly unrelentingly as a party boy—and who has given them plenty of fodder for such a portrayal: see “belligerently drunk” and “Nazi costume.”) Though his desire to see combat may have been genuine—the whole “I just want to be a normal boy” Paradox of the Prince and whatnot—that desire also has an undeniable PR angle. Today’s stories (Harry the Hero, Harry the Real Guy) are a far cry from previous ones (Harry the Bad Boy). And as far as the royal family goes, it may have a proud family tradition of sending its sons to combat—but it also has an image both to protect and enhance. And here it is, sacrificing its heir (the spare one, sure, but an heir nonetheless) to the Interests of Mother England. It all fits in well with Lacey’s Prince Hal comparison: like the one Shakespeare immortalized, the prince being immortalized by those contemporary bards in the press has—for now, at least—shed his reckless youth via that classic mechanism of redemption: serving in uniform alongside his countrymen. (In this instance, however, Henry-the-namesake might be slightly less poetic than Henry-the-Bardified-ancestor. The modern prince is fond of wearing a cap, the Daily Mail reported, that features a decidedly non-Shakespearian declaration stitched across it: “We do bad things to bad people.”)

Whether noble or self-interested, whether Harry’s current play is one of comedy or tragedy, the media are the agents who enabled it—and who are currently exalting in it. And, from what I’ve seen so far, they haven’t explained why; the blanket assumption of Harry’s entitlement to combat seems sufficient for most. But it’s worth questioning the somewhat perverse logic of royal entitlement being a justification for silence on the part of democratic press, rather than something to be railed against. (That logic may have flown in 1936; but haven’t times changed just a bit since then?) There was only one British national newspaper that didn’t feature a front-page story on Harry today: the Independent. Its deputy editor-in-chief, Ian Birrell, explained the decision to Reuters: “We don’t share our rivals’ incredible fascination with every aspect of the royal family’s lives,” he said. And that fascination plays out, oddly, in the last lines of the Post’s piece, which concludes—despite all the other questions and considerations it addresses—with the striking observation that…Harry’s death would be tragic.

Most Britons interviewed said they support Harry’s decision to fight for his country. But others worried that his death on the battlefield would be a terrible blow to Britain, particularly given his mother’s tragic death in a 1997 car accident.

“There is a sense in which these two boys, bearing the banner of Diana as they do, have created a reassuring and cheering partnership out of the tragedy of their mother’s death,” Lacey said.

“Apart from the obvious sadness people would feel if Harry were killed, for the royal family it would mean the loss of this important partnership of William and Harry. It would be devastating.”

Well, of course it would. Does that really need to be made explicit? (And made even more explicit as a kicker to a long, front-page story?) Strange. But strangeness, in this case, is revelatory. The loyalty the media have shown to the royal family in this instance seems rooted in the Post piece’s final lines—and, in particular, in its penultimate paragraph: in William and Harry not just as princes, but as Diana’s Sons—and in, specifically, “the tragedy of their mother’s death.” Many in the British public, after all, still blame the media for their complicity in that tragedy—if not for the Paris car crash itself, then for the human tragedy of the obsessive press coverage that led to it. The press, fairly or not, has never fully been able to redeem itself for its involvement in the protracted tragedy of Diana’s life and death. And, now, here’s a chance to swaddle everybody—son, mother, media—in the soft blanket of redemption.