On Sunday, people around the world watched Meghan Markle confess that she considered ending her life due to the relentless abuse of British media. On Monday, business continued as usual.
Details of Oprah Winfrey’s CBS interview with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, also known as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, were released on the front pages, as expected. But within the British tabloids and on the radio waves, columnists and commentators continued with their own style of coverage – which fueled the greatest resentment against Meghan – that made a pregnant woman suicidal. This is also true for the four tabloids whose stories have long sought to do the most damage, attracting enough concern from the Sussex press team who implemented a rare non-involvement policy with the vehicles when Meghan and Harry last came out of real life last year. .
These are just some of the pieces they published after the interview:
The Mail: “PIERS MORGAN: Meghan and Harry’s nauseating two-hour Oprah whine-athon was a shameful diatribe of cynical racial propaganda aimed at harming the Queen while her husband is in the hospital – and destroying the Monarchy.”
The Express: “Interview with Oprah: Meghan cost you everything, Harry – hopefully it will be worth it”.
The Sun: “SOAP OPRAH: Real experts appoint Harry and Meghan Oprah for a ‘selfish’ interview and say that Queen will be ‘absolutely devastated.
The Mirror: “Meghan and Harry destroying the royal family from within as survivors of a poisonous cult.”
Even more interesting is the media tour of Camilla Tominey, the reporter who published the November 2018 story – based on anonymous sources – about a confrontation between Meghan and Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, where Meghan supposedly made Kate cry. Details dominated the coverage. So, in the interview with Oprah, Meghan said that it was actually Kate who did your crying during a tense moment in the wedding planning process – a clear and official denial.
Still, the day after the interview, Tominey appeared as a real expert on the “TODAY” program in the United States, “Good Morning” on ITV in the United Kingdom, and was quoted in the New York Times and CBS News. With the exception of her appearance in “Good morning”, she was not asked how she had written the story that Meghan explicitly denied. BuzzFeed News contacted Tominey, TODAY, New York Times and CBS News for comment.
“I am very happy that Meghan confirmed my accurate story about an explosion in a bridesmaids dress test – although” the memories may differ “about who cried or not … thank you!” Tominey added on twitter.
At least publicly, on Twitter, there doesn’t seem to be much self-reflection among real reporters about how industry stories, possibly their own stories, have contributed to Meghan’s deteriorating mental health.
Some tabloids have gone further.
On Friday, Associated Newspapers, the parent company of MailOnline, Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, sent a formal letter to CBS calling for a headline montage that Oprah displayed during the “adulterated” interview.
“There was constant criticism, sexist and racist comments by British tabloids and internet trolls,” Oprah said in a narration as the images were shown. “We saw racism in relation to it happening in real time. Referring to it as ‘straight from Compton’. The daily vitriol attack and condemnation of the UK press has become oppressive and, in Meghan’s words, ‘almost impossible to survive’ ”.
A complaint from the newspaper network was, hey – not all of those terrible headlines were from the UK. Some were from the USA!
And another was that Associated did not agree with the content of its headlines that were based on other people’s racism. Like: “‘Meghan’s seed will contaminate our royal family’: the glamorous lover of the UKIP chief, 25, is suspended from the party by racist texts about Prince Harry’s future wife.”
To be clear – no headline text shown during the interview has been tampered with. Harpo Productions told BuzzFeed News, “We support the broadcast in its entirety”.
Since the explosive interview, attacks on UK tabloids and calls for change have come from all over the world. If the defensive reaction of the British media in recent days is any indication, things will continue.
In Sunday’s interview, the Sussex said it was specifically the attack on what they described as Meghan’s “racist” coverage by the British press that caused them to leave not only real life, but, for now at least, the UK.
“The UK press is prejudiced, specifically the tabloids,” said Harry.
It was a skillful move. For years, British tabloids have published speeches about the couple, feeding a parade of unidentified sources.
“It is unusually difficult to judge the reliability of most real reports because it is a world almost devoid of open or named sources,” wrote former Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger in a 2020 analysis of how Sussex is covered by British press. “To believe what we are told, we have to believe that there are currently legions of ‘helpers’, ‘palace members’, ‘friends’ and ‘senior courtiers’ constantly WhatsApping their favorite reporters with the gossip news.”
Now, Harry and Meghan were shooting back at a larger platform, without much resistance, and broadcast on television – officially, responsible for their words. Essentially asking: who should you believe?
One of the most shocking moments of the interview came when Meghan and Harry pointed to who they say are the facilitators of the harassment coverage themselves: the people inside Buckingham Palace. They conspired with the press to spread “falsehoods” about them, they said, or failed to correct the stories that Harry and Meghan told not only officials, but members of the royal family, knew they were lies – like when five days before the interview. Oprah, The Times claimed that Meghan bullied palace officials. A Sussex spokesman accused the newspaper of “being used by Buckingham Palace to spread a totally false narrative”, calling the story “a calculated smear campaign and damaging misinformation”. The Palace did not return requests for comment.
“If you as a family member are willing to drink wine, have dinner and give these reporters full access, then you will get a better press,” said Harry during the interview, describing an “invisible contract” that exists “behind closed doors” between the institutions and the tabloids. On Twitter, real correspondents scoffed in those collusion claims.
In giving their interview, Harry and Meghan destroyed much more than just the dramatic narrative of their lives by the UK press. They’ve turned the public’s eyes on the royal family, one of the most secretive institutions in the world – and when you go to the UK press for cold, hard facts about it, as Rusbridger wrote, you have to trust the reporter citing this anonymous source.
Whether this will have an impact on coverage going forward, remains to be seen.
The Publishers’ Society issued an indignant statement in response to Meghan and Harry’s interview, categorically denying that the British press is, as Harry said, “intolerant”.
After public protests, the group’s director, Ian Murray, resigned.
And the society issued a “clarification” statement admitting that there was “a lot of work to be done in the media to improve diversity and inclusion”.
Meghan’s tabloid narrative as the gold hunter, social escalation and the obstinate obstinacy of separating Harry from his innocent family has suffered its biggest blow – because, for the first time, we heard members of the royal family tell their own story.
“If the information source is inherently corrupt, racist or biased, it will be filtered out to the rest of society,” said Harry in the interview.
For now, society will be wondering what he meant by “source” – the media? Or the palace?
The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. Other international suicide helplines can be found at befrienders.org. You can also send a text message with TALK to 741741 for free, anonymous support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, on the Crisis Text Line.