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It was a passionate broadside and an expression of royal victimhood—fully earned in Harry’s case, given what happened to his mother. The immediate reaction among many within the British media world, however, was that the prince had overplayed his hand, and that he and his wife were now in for a savage, joyful drubbing. Judging by the conversations I had this week with various people along the media–royal axis, it’s more complicated than that.
Surprisingly, at least to many American readers, for whom the word “tabloid” summons the lowest of the low, British tabloids see themselves as fully respectable players, standing up for justice, worthy of sympathy. After the infamous phone-hacking scandal, the bloodthirsty, gleeful, borderline sociopathic Fleet Street predators of yore are, according to some observers, mostly extinct, which, as my newspaper-editor source pointed out, makes the Caesar metaphor a bit anachronistic. “That is 1980s thinking: Kelvin MacKenzie and Paul Dacre”—former longtime editors of the Sun and the Daily Mail, respectively—“ruling over the establishment like gods. In the ‘80s if the tabloids went after you, you’re dead. We’re talking Elton John and Freddie Mercury levels of constant, constant attacks.”
“The idea that the British tabloids are a bunch of ravening psychos is wrong,” echoed Patrick Jephson, chief of staff to Princess Diana for eight years and author of The Meghan Factor. “Back in the olden days, when the tabloids really were a wolf pack, inside the palace it was fashionable to say, ‘There are lies, damned lies, and tabloid exclusives.’ The default position was to dismiss the tabloids as lies, whereas the reality, as I learned, is that most of the time, most of the tabloids wrote truthful stuff.”
Meghan and Harry are mega-celebrities, of course, and Meghan content does exponentially more business, on any platform, than news about her future-queen sister-in-law. Plus she’s American, a bona fide star before she was a royal, with different, possibly more Kardashian-like ideas about how to build and leverage fame. The tabloids, on the other hand, tend to see themselves as an eternal part of the royal apparatus, with their own rights, their own prerogatives, and their own crucial role to play. Said my U.K. editor source, “The British press’s attitude toward the royals could be summed up as: We pay for you, and you just have to suck it up. If you want to have your house decorated, you must show me the first picture of your baby right away. And you will lose the weight, or else you will be told you are fat every day. I think Meghan and her publicity people are a bit more sophisticated, and they look round the side and think, I don’t care about the tabloids. I don’t need to curry favor with them. I can win the hearts and minds of the public by going around them via Instagram and Twitter, in a very American style of positivity and celebration and inclusivity. I don’t think this strategy will make the coverage of them any easier, but maybe she feels like, there’s nothing left to lose. What on earth could there possibly be that’s worse than where she is right now?”
The coverage of Meghan has indeed been savage at times. (“Harry’s girl is (almost) straight outta Compton: Gang-scarred home of her mother revealed – so will he be dropping by for tea?”) Alan Rusbridger, former longtime editor of the venerable Guardian, has considerable sympathy. Harry’s “mother died, chased down a tunnel by paparazzi,” he said. “Even if the driver was drunk, we could all have a little imagination about why the unrelenting pursuit of his new wife might feel very raw. The sheer amount of bile and fury directed at Meghan may or may not have a race element to it. But it is a bit weird and obsessive and must be very unpleasant to be at the receiving end. Harry is sixth in line. It’s pretty inconceivable he’ll ever get the number one job. So the amount of attention the couple gets is disproportionate.”
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