Photos of dying Diana create furor

By Mimi Turner

LONDON (Hollywood Reporter) - Channel 4 on Monday said it will go ahead with the broadcast of a film showing previously unseen photographs of Princess Diana in the car crash that killed her in 1997, despite anger from her friends and criticism from politicians.

The broadcaster, which earlier this year stoked controversy with the fictionalized assassination of President George Bush in "Death of a President," has denied the program is sensationalizing Diana's death and has described the film as "responsible."

It will broadcast "Diana: The Witnesses in the Tunnel" next week, to mark the 10th anniversary of her death. Newspapers here have reported that the program features previously unpublished photographs of the princess receiving medical attention from a doctor as she lay dying in the back of the black Mercedes S-class vehicle in which her lover, Dodi Fayed, and the driver, Henri Paul, also were killed.

Very few of the photos taken by paparazzi and passers by on the night of the crash in August 1997 have surfaced in the media, and many were confiscated as evidence by the French legal authorities in the aftermath of the crash in the Pont d'Alma in Paris.

The broadcaster said the images shown in the program, which was made by its history department, have been "carefully and sensitively selected" and that the identities of those in the car had been blacked out.

"These photographs are an important and accurate eyewitness record of how events unfolded after the crash," a Channel 4 statement said.

"We acknowledge there is great public sensitivity surrounding pictures of the victims and these have not been included," Channel 4 said, adding that it believed the events were the subject of "genuine public interest" to know how the events leading to Diana's death had unfolded.

The broadcaster's comment have not mollified critics.