Hal And Megs Trigger The Creeps

Our free and fearless press is up in arms this morning at the news that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex will no longer be cooperating with the Sun, Mail, Mirror and Express titles. At all. As usual, while the press snivels “the rotten Sussexes did it during a global pandemic”, the real reason is that the same press was doing it too.

And what's more, Ron

What the press was doing, and what has been going on behind the scenes, are absent from the frothing, ranting, howling and otherwise petulant responses to the announcement. But detail from court papers revealed by Byline Investigates shows the real story.

Piers who?

So while the Sun’s deeply unpleasant “executive editor” Dan Wootton Retweets anyone and everyone saying that no-one cares, the Sussexes only care about themselves, that they’re yesterday’s news, and thereby showing all of that to be untrue, the real reason for the ban, and why Wootton and others like former Screws and Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan are so uptight right now, is being revealed by the couple’s legal team.

While Morgan scoffs “Imagine announcing this in the middle of a global pandemic? Imagine thinking anyone cares about their hurt little me-me-me egos as health workers around the world are dying at work? What a pair of repulsive, deluded narcissistic tools” (maybe he looked in the mirror twice this morning), the reality for the Mail titles, for whose website he is an “editor at large”, looks grim.

As Byline Investigates has told, “the [Duchess of Sussex] has filed her response to the [Mail on Sunday]’s Defence in her legal action over its publication of a private letter she sent her father Thomas Markle before her wedding to [Prince Harry] … The 30-plus page, approx 9,000-word, document will take a wrecking ball to the newspaper’s publishers own 44-page case which seeks to justify allegations of misuse of [Duchess Meghan]’s private information, breach of Data Protection Rights and infringement of copyright”. Ouch!

Then it gets bad for the Mail titles: “Mr Markle himself will describe one of its journalists as writing a [Mail Online] interview with him containing ‘lies and bullshit’. [Associated Newspapers Limited] will further be accused of being the cause of the ‘dispute’ between Mr Markle and his daughter”. Calling Thomas Markle as a press witness? Unwise.

And it gets worse still: the Sussexes “are understood to have included details of a series of text messages with Thomas Markle that counter ANL's claims they did not enquire about his health and wellbeing following a heart attack … Among the text messages are some written from Prince Harry in which he is said to urge Mr Markle to beware speaking to the Press as it would ‘backfire’, going on to offer him help and reassure him the couple were not angry with him”. Then comes a really bad one for the Mail titles.

“Other messages show the Duchess was worried about Mr Markle’s health, pleaded with him to contact her, asked where he was in hospital, and offering him a security detail, which he declined”. That would just about put the lid on the Mail’s defence.

And that is why the reaction from the press establishment has been “look over there at those two self serving nasty people doing this during a global pandemic”.

Piers Morgan’s pals look about to lose this one big time. I’ll just leave that one there.

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