Printing Topless Pictures of Kate Middleton Is a Good Way to Lose Your Job
Michael O'Kane, the editor of the Irish Daily Star, has learned the hard way that no one will find it amusing if you publish topless pictures of the Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton, and it will result in you losing your job.
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The pictures originally ran in the French magazine Closer, but a few publications were brave enough to license them. The Irish Daily Star was brave enough to republish the risqué photos from William and Kate's vacation that caught the two with very little on. Publishing magnate Richard Desmond, whose company Northern & Shell owns the paper in partnership with INM, nearly shut down the paper after the photos were republished. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed and the paper stayed open.
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O'Kane, the editor who made the decision to run the photos, was suspended while the paper carried out an internal investigation over the decision to run the pictures. Eventually they found the paper didn't violate any ethical boundaries, but O'Kane still had to go. The official statement from the Star says "issues arose" with paper shareholders because of the pictures, and "having considered those issues in tandem with Mr O'Kane, it is Mr O'Kane's decision to resign as editor of the Irish Daily Star, effective immediately." Which, to translate the PR-ese, means O'Kane was told to resign.
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It probably didn't help O'Kane's case that, of the all the publications that ran the photos, the Star was the closest to the United Kingdom. But if you're going to go out, you might as well go out because you printed naked pictures of royalty.
