After the accusations of racism against the British tabloids made by Prince Harry of the United Kingdom and his wife Meghan Markle during the controversial interview with host Oprah Winfrey, there was quite a stir in the British press. The Society of British Publishers, which brings together some 400 members of the national and local press, has rejected accusations of racism against the media, but the affair has opened up a wide discussion among journalists and experts on whether the British press, in particular conservative tabloids are not inclusive enough.
After the interview with Winfrey, the Society of British Publishers released a press release to dismiss the accusations of racism in newspapers and make it clear that the UK media “are not prejudiced and bigoted”.
The press release from the Society of Publishers was however widely criticized, including from more than 250 journalists, writers and academics, who have signed one open letter to contest their positions. Among the signatories are 60 journalists from Guardian andObserver, numerous freelancers and several black journalists: according to them the “total refusal to admit that there is no form of bigotry in the British press is ridiculous.”
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Journalists said that the Society of Publishers “is incapable of recognizing reality” and above all does not address the problem of the lack of diversity in British journalism: in particular, according to them, there is a lack of representation of different ethnic groups in the executive roles of the press, and this “contributes to the negative narratives” that are read in the country’s media. According to data provided by the UK National Council for the Training of Journalists, in fact, the 94 percent some reporters are white.
On Wednesday, after the criticisms received, the Society of Publishers published a note clarifying that “there is still a lot of work to be done in the media to improve diversity and inclusion”. Executive director Ian Murray resigned so that “the organization can begin to rebuild its reputation.” At the same time, the television reporter Piers Morgan he was fired gives ITV – the channel that aired Meghan and Harry’s interview on Monday night in the UK – for saying they “didn’t believe a word” of what Markle had said. After Morgan’s comment, the UK’s regulatory agency for communications companies, Ofcom, had received over 41,000 complaints.
– Read also: Do tabloid papers treat Meghan Markle worse than Kate Middleton?
The best selling newspapers in the UK are rather unreliable tabloids which are mostly read by white, elderly and basically conservative people. These newspapers often feed on false or exaggerated news, which are commented mostly with a moralistic slant: for this reason, Harry’s relationship with Meghan Markle – American, divorced, older than him, of African American origin – has been since immediately targeted by the tabloids. The problem of how the tabloids talk about the royal family has been widely discussed.
In 2016, when Harry and Meghan had just started dating, Harry he had reported that some photographers had tried to break into her house and that the newspapers had tried to bribe her ex-boyfriends to get rumors about her. Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall and wife of Prince Charles, was also described by the tabloids as a “family wrecker” for having long been Charles’s lover. The Financial Times he told that in 2006, almost ten years after his death, the Daily Express he had published 47 first pages on Lady Diana.
On Wednesday morning, two days after Meghan and Harry’s interview with Winfrey aired in the UK, the homepage of the Daily Mail (MailOnline) had 20 different articles talking about it.
In an interview with Winfrey, Harry said that the royal family has signed a kind of “invisible contract” with the tabloids for fear of the newspapers “turning against them.”
According to Harry, the problem is that if members of the royal family treat these reporters well and give ample space, then they will be treated well by the tabloids; if they try to escape media coverage or refuse to collaborate with them – as Harry and Meghan did last year when they decided to become more independent and deal with their communication more independently – then they risk being attacked. And the pressures and racism of the tabloid tabloids were some of the reasons so the couple decided not to be actively part of the monarchy anymore and to leave the United Kingdom.
Camilla, like Meghan, spoke openly about the hostile treatment she had suffered from the press, but she did so in a ‘interview dates to Mail on Sunday, another conservative tabloid from the same publisher of the Daily Mail. Penny Junor, Camilla’s biographer, said the Duchess was “a decidedly frowned upon and vilified woman”, but she managed to “reverse the situation simply by being kind to the people who take care of her for work.” Camilla “is different,” Junor said, “she knows the name of every reporter who follows the royal house, she knows about their children.”
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