For years, we’ve known that Kensington Palace and Buckingham Palace run their own WhatsApp groups with royal rota reporters. Many rota reporters have spoken about the WhatsApp groups, and you can absolutely trace many talking points and stories to the groups. I remember when the Duke and Duchess of Sussex traveled to Nigeria and Colombia, and BP’s WhatsApp group was furiously encouraging reporters to include lines about “no one knows why Harry and Meghan are there” and “this a royal-style tour, they promised not to do that!” Well, in recent years, Harry and Meghan have tried to create their own little reporter groupchat. These reporters are not Sussex loyalists, but the Sussexes have deemed them to be somewhat fair enough to warrant updates, statements, clarifications and announcements. I’m sure the Sussex WhatsApp group includes: the BBC, at least one Telegraph reporter (perhaps multiple reporters), Sky News, People Magazine, maybe someone at the Times of London, and maybe one or two other outlets. The group does NOT include the Mail’s Richard Eden. And Eden devoted his Mail column this week to throwing a tantrum about it.
We journalists treasure our sources – and nowhere in my chosen trade is that more the case than in the ultra-competitive world of royal reporting, where inside information is extremely hard to come by. So it’s understandable that some of my peers were thrilled to be included in a WhatsApp group created by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s ‘Director of Communications’, Liam Maguire. As members of the select group, they would be the first to learn the latest news from the California-based couple.
Journalists who are members are not hard to identify because they all post the same updates, often using an identical form of words, on social media as soon as these tablets of stone are handed down from Montecito. It’s not journalism, as such, but it does mean they have information that others, such as myself, do not possess.
I cannot pretend to have refused to join the WhatsApp group on ethical or indeed any other grounds, because Mr Maguire never invited me to join. Having been a social diarist for most of my career, I am used to being treated with caution. After all, ruffling feathers, not stroking them, is part of my job description. This week, however, I am profoundly relieved not to be a member of the Sussexes’ WhatsApp group because those who are have been made to look like prize chumps – through no fault of their own, I might add.
Last Friday, they all received a long message confirming details of Prince Harry and Meghan’s return visit to Britain next week. It wasn’t just the type of short message they sometimes receive but a long operational note detailing exactly what the couple would be doing after they landed in this country. It was said to confirm that they would be bringing their children, Prince Archie, aged seven, and Princess Lilibet, five, with them. It would be the first time that the children had been in Britain since they came for Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations in June 2022.
…However, reporters’ gratitude at confirmation of such a scoop turned to alarm the next day when The Sun newspaper reported that Harry’s demand for automatic, taxpayer-funded police protection had been rejected by the Home Office committee which decides such matters. This soon led to another ping on the phones of the WhatsApp group members. This time it was a message informing them that everything they had been told the previous day and duly reported on their employers’ websites and newspapers was, in fact, wrong. Harry was now ‘reconsidering plans to bring his wife and children to the UK… after his request for police protection was rejected’, as the BBC’s Daniela Relph put it.
Spare a thought for the BBC’s poor viewers and website users! Less than 24 hours after they had been informed, with all the authority that the Corporation could muster, that something was going to happen, they were now being told that it might not happen at all. Readers of the ‘newspapers of record’ which also had to report the volte-face will have been equally confused. The reporters should be forgiven. As royal correspondents, they are used to receiving briefing notes that help them cover events. The palace notes are usually factual, so the journalists might have expected Harry and Meghan’s messages to be equally trustworthy. Fat chance.
What makes it worse is that nothing actually changed between Friday and Saturday. All the Home Office committee did was repeat what has been the case since the Sussexes quit royal duties and moved to North America to seek their fortune in 2020. And what was reiterated by the judge when Harry lost his appeal against the Home Office’s decision last year: the couple no longer qualified for automatic, taxpayer-funded security because they had moved overseas. The only thing that changed was that Harry threw his toys out of his pram when the Home Office confirmed that its policy still applied to them.
What’s crazy is that Eden and several Mail columnists and reporters are on KP and BP’s groupchats, so his hissy fit is absolutely about wanting to be included in the Sussexes’ chat. What’s also crazy is that Eden knows exactly why the circumstances changed and why the briefings changed – because RAVEC informed Harry of the lack of security AFTER Liam Maguire sent out the schedule confirmation. All of the reporters got to write follow-up stories about the new situation, so what is Eden really complaining about again? Nevermind, I know.
I also think it’s pretty wild to call out the Sussexes for changing their plans when their security circumstances changed. They’re trying to say that Harry, Meghan and their team lied. Nope. “The palace notes are usually factual…” Like the palace notes saying that Kate completed the Three Peaks Challenge “solo,” right? Like Kensington Palace releasing a steady stream of manipulated and edited photos? Like King Charles and his people swearing up and down for years that Camilla would be called “Princess Consort” and not queen? Like all of the lies the palace has told to cover for Prince Andrew’s crimes and degeneracy??
Photos courtesy of Cover Images.
