New York Magazine recently published an interesting piece called “What It’s Like to Be a Member of the Royal Press Pack.” The person was not identified, but they’re talking about being part of the royal rota, the official “royal reporters” tasked with covering the daily activities of the Windsors and communicating with the palace comms offices. Not to be confused with a royal commentator, who could be anyone from a former butler to a well-connected columnist to a deviant with kompromat. The point of the piece seems to be that the rota didn’t know what the hell was going on with the Princess of Wales before the video announcement about her cancer. There’s also a very strange and untrue side-discussion about how the rota were totally supportive of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, pinky-swear promise. Some highlights:
Another bum year for the Windsors: Certainly it’s turning out to be another annus horribilis for the royal family. The life of a royal correspondent is structured around the official engagement. It wasn’t always the case, but as the job has changed, the official engagements are the best chance to see the working royals in action and the best chance to talk to officials, the people who work for them. Those official engagements are very choreographed, and often the story is when the choreography goes wrong or when something unexpected happens. So when they first announced on the same day that both Kate and Charles were going into hospital and both were going to need a period of recuperation, I think the feeling was, What are we going to do? There’s not going to be anything to write for a couple of months.
The American press basically pressured these dumbasses to do their jobs: The working day has partly been reacting to all the rumors. It was pressure from editors to come up with a fresh story, a fresh line, trying to weigh how seriously to take some of the stuff that you are reading from elsewhere, from abroad in particular—because don’t forget, the American press has been deeply involved in all of this. We were always in a difficult position. I just thought that being a reporter meant you just get the facts and then you tell the readers what the facts were. But on the royal beat, it’s much more than that. You have to think, Well, what are the readers going to say? The editors think, How is this going to look?
The photo of Kate in the car with her mother: We had that situation where Kate hadn’t been seen since Christmas, and then Backgrid had taken a picture of her in the car traveling with her mother. A couple of people claimed that the British papers decided not to run that picture because the palace put huge pressure on them not to do it. As far as I’m aware, that’s not the case. I think papers decided it’s probably not going to be a good look if we run those pictures. Always at the back of anybody in the media’s mind is the feeling that the readers are going to say, “They’re doing to her what they did to Diana.” The days of the British media just blindly ignoring requests from the palace are long gone. You have to ask yourself: Well, how did they get that picture? Did they chase the car? Then you cannot use that picture. In that particular situation, my personal view was that the papers and the broadcasters could have used those pictures of Kate with her mother. It was interesting that they didn’t. Then they did use a picture of William with her in the car, which wasn’t a very good picture. I mean, she was looking away.
The rota didn’t know the real story: Of course, the readers themselves are hypocrites. Just about every person I’ve met in the last three months, whether they are ardent monarchists, strong republicans, or just completely indifferent, have asked me, “So what’s really wrong with Kate? And what about the king? What type of cancer he’s got?” The truth is I don’t think anybody in the media knew, but I think everybody thinks, Oh, they really know what’s going on, but we didn’t.
When Kensington Palace manipulated a photo & blamed a woman with cancer for the manipulation, the rota felt bad for the KP flunkies: The royal press pack is quite a sensitive group of people, and it’s a lot less brutal than the politics beat is. On a personal level, the members of the royal press pack will never be friends with William and Kate or the king and Camilla. Sometimes we might exchange a bit of banter or conversation, but we know we’re never going to be their friends. Still, when the Mother’s Day photo created that frenzy, I think a lot of the reporters genuinely felt for the couple, and even more so for the press office staff who worked for them. And I think quite a few people messaged the communications secretary at Kensington Palace and others, saying, “We feel for you, and don’t worry too much.”
Kate’s cancer video: There was this frenzy, day after day, that the palace is going to be making a big announcement today and all of us thinking, Nobody’s told us anything. But again, you don’t want to look a fool if you’re wrong. On the Friday they released Kate’s video, I heard there was going to be an announcement, but I’d read that every other day as well. The British press was told at 3:30 that there’s going to be an off-the-record briefing at four o’clock. Everybody was scrambling to make sure that they were by a computer and with a link to tune in.
What happens next: Now everybody’s looking to see, Well, what happens next? Are the king and Kate both going to make a full recovery? I think the British monarchy is going to need to make a bit of a splash perhaps in the second half of this year or early next year to get things back on track because it does feel as if things have been derailed. If they don’t come back that strongly, then that I think will be a worry for the British monarchy because there’s a very small cast of characters who people actually care about. To be frank with you, I think Edward and Sophie are lovely, and Princess Anne is very popular and is admired for just doing that old-fashioned work: opening the hospitals, going to charity shops, whatever. But it’s really just the king and queen and William and Kate who are the box office.
The real feelings about the Sussexes: And of course, we did have Harry and Meghan, and that’s the other element to it, that in spite of what a lot of people abroad think, the British press wanted Harry and Meghan to be there. They embraced Meghan. They thought that she was fantastic box-office material who would help sell a lot of papers, bring about a lot of clicks. But we’ve lost them, and I don’t think there’s much prospect of them coming back for now, because I don’t think the future of the monarchy lies in part-time royals who are off making money.
We talk so much about the staggering incompetence of the Windsors and their staff, but spare a moment to understand how completely f–ked the royal rota system is. Rota members were sending sympathetic emails to KP staffers after they bungled that Mother’s Day photo to the point where global photo agencies compared KP to North Korea and Iran. Instead of using that moment to apply journalistic pressure on KP to start coming clean, royal reporters were slavishly kissing ass and fussing on those poor dumb courtiers who had just tossed a woman with cancer under the bus for their f–kup. These reporters are not journalists whatsoever – they’re not actually investigating or questioning people with power, they’re merely acting as stenographers to power. The past four months should have been a wake-up call that the rota’s business as usual wasn’t going to cut it anymore. Unfortunately, too many people are invested in this dysfunctional system. This rota reporter is blatantly lying about several things too, including the pressure applied to kill the photo of Kate and Carole in the car. Prince William threatened every paper and they all agreed.
As for what this person says about the Sussexes… I do think the rota looked forward to writing about the Sussexes for years to come, but let’s be clear: the British papers, the rota journalists and the royal commentators were looking forward to destroying Meghan and tearing her apart for the rest of her life. They thought it would be more profitable to lie about her and racially abuse her and make her into the racist trope of an angry Black woman.
Kate Middleton Seen in Public for First Time Since Mystery Hospitalization | Click to read more https://t.co/O7zlxZfiCY
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