Before Meghan and Harry announced their move to Canada they had mapped out a new way of engaging with the media. The ambitious media plan detailed on their new website involved making some major changes to the way news about them is reported. Currently they feel they are misrepresented in the British press, whom Harry blames the media for peddling “relentless propaganda” about the couple and vilifying Meghan.
Among the many changes they announced was the decision to “No longer participate in the royal rota system.” That decision is less relevant now that they have left the U.K., but is nonetheless telling about how they want to be portrayed in the media from now on.
According to their new website they plan to engage with grassroots media organizations and young, up-and-coming journalists rather than established royal correspondents. “Their sincere hope is that this change in media policy will enhance access and give the Duke and Duchess the ability to share information more freely with members of the public,” explains the site.
Harry is expected to return to the U.K. for several long-standing commitments before the new changes come into effect this spring, and Palace aides say that up until that point the rota will cover these engagements as usual. For decades every member of the royal family including the queen has accommodated the royal rota, a select group of royal correspondents invited to cover royal engagements for the British national press and broadcasters.
According to the Sun’s royal reporter Emily Andrews, “Like all royals Harry and Meghan have had praise and criticism in different measure, but a major benefit of the rota is to give positive promotion to the charities and causes the royals are working with. I was told by a very senior Palace source that the [royal family] are very grateful for the coverage from the British tabloids because of the causes and charities they promote.”
Andrews continued, “I think not working with the rota will result in less coverage for Harry and Meghan which might be their reason for doing it. They’ve made it clear they only want good news and what this [new move] means is they get to control the narrative. I think we’ll see a lot more spin and positive PR spin for them, but I think the public will lose out. The role of a journalist is to report without fear or favor. You say what you see and that’s what we do. If the Sussexes are controlling all the coverage you’ll only get the sanitized PR version. It will be fascinating to see how it pans out.”
Royal reporter Richard Palmer sees Harry and Meghan’s move as part of a larger trend. “I think Harry and Meghan’s attempt to cut out the mainstream media is part of a wider move by public figures to cut out the middleman and exert more control over their image,” says Palmer. “They are doing the same as our main political parties which have tried to restrict press access to those titles that rarely criticize them. I see them in the same mold as Donald Trump, who tried to cut out CNN and the New York Times and only deal with media that rarely challenged or scrutinized him. In fact the main British newspapers have generally written upbeat stories about them and promoted their causes. The royal rota system works reasonably well and so does the system of having specialist royal correspondents who know the backstory and can find a way of highlighting the cause while engaging readers who are more interested in what the royals are wearing or how they all get on with each other. They are going to lose that if they exclude the main British papers and broadcasters in favor of more specialist or benign media outfits. For the mainstream media there will be no incentive to even write about them.”
Which might, of course, be the Sussexes aim. To say that they aren’t fans of the British media is putting it lightly. Harry has always had a fractious relationship with the press (who he blames for his mother’s death) while Meghan is said to feel the tabloids were out to destroy her from the beginning. She is currently taking action against the Mail on Sunday for publishing excerpts of a private letter to her father while Harry is separately suing two other tabloids.
If there are more paparazzi pictures, there could well be more lawsuits to follow.
