Days before Catherine, Princess of Wales ended wild speculation about her absence from public life by revealing that she was battling cancer, a leading royal journalist appeared on British television and delivered a stark message to the media: Give it a rest.
“I think everyone should just give her some space,” Roya Nikkhah, royal editor of The Sunday Times of London, told “Good Morning Britain.” “This is a woman who has been in the public eye since she was 20, and she has almost made no mistake. I think we all need to cut back a little.
The idea of the editor of a publication owned by Rupert Murdoch scolding other journalists for being nosy may seem a bit perverse to some. After all, London newspapers were pioneers in celebrating the House of Windsor, famously hunting down the previous Princess of Wales, Diana, and revealing the most microscopic details of her and her children’s private lives.
However, in the case of Catherine’s recent whereabouts, the British press has largely shown unusual restraint.
Yes, they reported on the rumor craze, but mostly under the guise of chastising social media users for spreading conspiracies. When the American website TMZ obtained a paparazzi photo of Catherine and her mother in a car, London newspapers unanimously refused to publish it.
And when Catherine’s cancer was revealed, the British media quickly attacked their counterparts overseas, accusing American tabloids and media personalities of recklessly amplifying more outlandish rumors. (It’s worth noting that British defamation laws are much stricter than those in the United States.) Piers Morgan, himself a former tabloid editor, has demanded that Stephen Colbert apologize for joking about Prince William’s affair rumors.
Feisty London tabloids often emphasize high moral standards, but other factors come into play. The royal family and Fleet Street are a pair of British institutions whose fates and fortunes have long been intertwined – and face similar challenges in the age of new media.
The gatekeepers who once controlled the official flow of information – whether palace press secretaries or tabloid editors – are increasingly powerless against the online wave. When it first emerged that Catherine had undergone abdominal surgery, Kensington Palace said it would not be providing further information on her condition. British royal correspondents, who must worry about long-term relationships with the future king and queen, largely followed this directive.
However, both camps were confused by the rampant misinformation spreading on the Internet. The tabloids that once excelled in royal sensationalism – and are still struggling with the long-running phone hacking scandal – have now been unable to shut it down. And palace officials, reluctant to jeopardize the princess’s privacy, wrongly believed that the rumors would disappear.
The result is a narrative based on online conversations that has escaped the control of traditional gatekeepers.
“I’ve never seen the reaction we had online and the huge conspiracy around this particular story,” Max Foster, CNN’s chief London anchor, said in an interview. “There was a moment about a week ago when some really sensible, smart friends came up to me and said, ‘I think there’s something going on here.’
He spent hours discussing with CNN executives how to responsibly cover the Catherine rumors without spreading misinformation, a balancing act he called “a real challenge.”
Helen Lewis, a British writer for The Atlantic, also he lamented that some of her friends “have become followers of Kate Middleton’s truth.” In essay on Friday in “I Hope You’re All Feeling Terrible Right Now,” Ms. Lewis argued that the situation showed the terrifying power of social media to hijack rational discourse and, in her view, force a woman with cancer to reveal a private diagnosis.
“If you’ve ever wanted proof that the ‘mainstream media’ is less powerful than ever before,” she wrote, “then this video of Kate Middleton sitting on a bench is for you.”
But even British newspapers admitted that Kensington Palace officials deserved some of the blame for allowing an information vacuum to develop.
It was the lack of an official explanation for Catherine’s absence that led self-appointed internet sleuths to come up with crazy explanations. The cover-up theory gained traction when the palace released a doctored photo of Catherine and her children.
Members of the royal family must “tell the truth about what’s really going on or risk drowning in a quagmire of their own making” – Sarah Vine, influential Daily Mail columnist he wrote after the photography fiasco.
Still, the whole episode suggested something that might reassure British royalists. “It revealed in a strange way how important this family is,” said Eva Wolchover, the British-American co-host of a podcast concerning the royal family.The Windsors and the Losers“
“There have been stories circulating for some time like: ‘Meghan and Harry are gone,’ ‘We have an older king on the throne,’ ‘Young people don’t care about the royal family,’” Ms. Wolchover said in an interview. “The fact that the whole world has started talking about it in the last few weeks shows that they are still as culturally interesting to us as ever.”
