Just days before Duchess Kate revealed she was battling cancer, ending wild speculation over her absence from public appearances, a top royal journalist appeared on British national television with a stern message to the media: “No more.” I told you.
“I think everyone needs to give her a little bit of space,” Roya Nikka, royal editor of London's Sunday Times, said on “Good Morning Britain.” She said: “This is a woman who has been in the public eye since her early 20s, but she has hardly ever put her foot down. I think we all deserve a little break.”
The idea of an editor at a Rupert Murdoch-owned publication scolding other journalists for being impatient may seem a bit rich to some. After all, the London newspaper ushered in the Windsor family's festivities and became famous for tailing Diana, Princess of Wales, and exposing minute details of her and her children's private lives.
However, the British press has generally shown unusual restraint when it comes to Duchess Kate's recent whereabouts.
Yes, they reported on the rumor frenzy, but most of it was in the name of reprimanding the social media users who spread the conspiracy. When American media outlet TMZ obtained a paparazzi photo of Catherine and her mother in her car, London newspapers all refused to publish it.
And when it was revealed that Duchess Kate had cancer, British media quickly attacked those across the pond, accusing American tabloids and media figures of recklessly amplifying the wild rumors. (It's worth noting that UK libel laws are much stricter than US libel laws.) Former tabloid editor Piers Morgan has demanded that Stephen Colbert apologize for joking about rumors that Prince William was having an affair.
London's peppy tabloids often claim the moral high ground, but other factors are also at play. The Royal Family and Fleet Street are British institutions whose fates and fortunes have long been intertwined, and they face similar challenges in the new media age.
The gatekeepers who once controlled the flow of official information – be they palace spokespeople or tabloid editors – are increasingly powerless against online trends. When it first emerged that Duchess Kate had undergone her abdominal surgery, Kensington Palace declared it would not provide any further updates on her condition. Britain's royal correspondents, concerned about the long-term relationship between the future king and queen, largely followed suit.
However, both sides were troubled by the misinformation circulating on the internet. The tabloid that once spearheaded royal sensationalism and is still grappling with a long-running phone hacking scandal has now been unable to shut it down. And palace officials, reluctant to invade the princess's privacy, mistakenly believed the rumors would go away.
The result is a narrative driven by online chatter that strays from the control of traditional gatekeepers.
“I haven't seen any reaction online or anything like a huge conspiracy surrounding this particular story,” CNN London lead anchor Max Foster said in an interview. “About a week ago, some really smart, intelligent friends started coming up to me and saying, 'I think there's something going on here.'
He spent hours discussing with CNN executives how to responsibly report on rumors about Duchess Kate without spreading misinformation, but he called striking that balance a “real challenge.” I called it.
Helen Lewis, a British writer for the Atlantic, also lamented that some of her friends had become “witnesses for Kate.” In Friday's essay, “I hope you're all feeling terrible right now,'' Lewis wrote that this incident hijacked rational discussion and forced women affected by cancer to share private information. She claimed to have revealed the terrifying power of social media to force her to reveal things in her mind. diagnosis.
“If you want proof that the 'mainstream media' has less influence than ever, look no further than this video of Duchess Kate sitting on a bench,” she wrote.
However, British newspapers also acknowledged that Kensington Palace officials should bear some of the responsibility for allowing the information vacuum to develop.
The lack of an official explanation for Kate's absence led to people who called themselves online sleuths to fabricate outlandish explanations. The rumors of a cover-up were further fueled when the palace released doctored photos of Duchess Kate and her children.
Influential Daily Mail columnist Sarah Vine said after the photo fiasco that the royal family “must reveal what's really going on, or they'll be the ones who created it.” We must risk drowning in the quagmire.”
Still, the whole episode suggested something that might be reassuring to British Royalists. British-American Eva Walchover, co-host of the Royals podcast Windsors & Losers, said: “What this, oddly enough, reveals is how important that family still is.'' It's about whether there is.”
“For a while, there was talk that 'Meghan and Prince Harry are gone,' or 'An older king has taken the throne,' or 'young people don't care about the royal family,'” Walchover said. said in an interview. “The fact that the whole world has started talking about this in the last few weeks shows that they are and still are culturally interesting.”
