Yesterday, Press Gazette told readers “Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have won an apology and correction from the Sun after the newspaper wrongly claimed they had banned staff from using a car park because it overlooked their new home”. Another front page “exclusive” from over-inflated creep Dan Wootton which turned out not to be true.
And this was merely a sighting shot: the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have finally decided that enough is enough, and have pressed the nuclear button: Meghan had previously threatened legal action over the Mail on Sunday’s publication of a private letter written by her to her father. Now that threat has been converted into a real live lawsuit.
Much of the press has been silent about the action, and so has not told its readers about Harry’s clearly highly personal statement, with which many victims of press intrusion will readily identify, telling “Though this action may not be the safe one, it is the right one … I’ve seen what happens when someone I love is commoditised to the point that they are no longer treated or seen as a real person … I lost my mother and now I watch my wife falling victim to the same powerful forces”. He talked of “history repeating itself”.
Those victims will also recognise the sentiments Harry expresses when he says “There is a human cost to this relentless propaganda, specifically when it is knowingly false and malicious, and though we have continued to put on a brave face - as so many of you can relate to - I cannot begin to describe how painful it has been … They have been able to create lie after lie at her expense simply because [Meghan] has not been visible while on maternity leave”. Lying, sadly, is what the tabloids do when it comes to the Royals.
And it’s what they do when it comes to ordinary people, too. Ask Danielle Hindley, another victim of the MoS and its less than principled behaviour, who almost had her business closed down by a fake story. Ask Andy Miller, who had to endure several years of legal action to secure redress against the Daily Mail. Ask Juliet Shaw, about whom the Mail invented a complete pack of lies, and then dared her to sue.
Ask Christopher Jefferies, effectively convicted by the press for a crime in which he played no part. Ask the McCanns. Ask Paul Gait and Elaine Kirk, who were plastered over the front page of the MoS last December after they were wrongly fingered as the cause of the drone incursions that disrupted flights at London’s Gatwick Airport.
Ask any of the victims of phone hacking, email hacking, blagging, bribery, doxxing, misuse of the Police National Computer, misuse of NHS records, and misuse of phone company records. Ask those about whom the press just makes it up anyway. And of course we can’t ask Lucy Meadows about her monstering by the Daily Mail. Because she’s dead.
The vast majority of those victims are ordinary people. They were smeared, just as Harry and Meghan were smeared. They get no publicity. They are merely collateral damage, there to serve no other purpose than to enable the press to flog a few more newspapers.
Well, now a couple who are not mere ordinary people have decided to fight back against the tide of invention, maliciousness, monstering, bigotry and, yes, hatred.
That’s why Harry and Meghan speak for all of us. More power to both of them.
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5 comments:
Open and shut case by the sound of it. The writer or a letter owns the copyright of it.
As a republican I have no time for the British "royal" family and our unelected head of state.
But the media treatment of Meghan Markle is a completely different matter. There's no doubt in my mind the woman has been treated this way because of the colour of her skin. It's what the racist Murdoch/Rothermere goons do. The perpetrators are the rotten bottom of the barrel in contemporary British culture, people without any conscience or feeling whatever, tenth rate media spivs and gutter thugs on the make.
Every individual who took part in this latest disgusting example is responsible for his or her actions. There can be no excuses for them. They are a disgrace to human decency. They are the logical conclusion of the kind of morally corrupt country we have become in the last forty years. Which is why we need Leveson 2 and the institution of a Fairness Doctrine throughout all press and broadcast media.
And if you think this episode is bad......wait until we have a general election and you see the far right lies, hypocrisy and propaganda spewed against Jeremy Corbyn.
Another reminder that the Real enemy within is the MSM as well as the Neoliberal political elite. I always remember how the Daily Mail treated Diana like shit before her death and then treated her like a saint afterwards in order to make money. Our press needs to be reformed. It is evil.
I am constantly amused by the refusal of our supposedly monarchist press to refer to the Duchesses of Cambridge or Sussex by their titles, as though they are interlopers or reality TV stars. Diana Spencer only became Princess of Wales to them once she was dead.
Echoing Anon's statement; I too have little time for the Windsors but the treatment of Meghan at the hands of the press is disgusting and has to stop. It is, as Anon believes, inherently racist of the MSM, from these ridiculously fake front page splashes to Eamon Holmes describing her as 'uppity' on daytime TV. We need a Labour govt committed to instigating stage two of Leveson and for the rest of the country to follow Liverpool's lead and ban The S*n.
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