Instagram became their platform of choice. They would drip feed news as and when they wanted. This would give them total control and cut out the hated tabloids, so, on privacy grounds, they refused to allow Archie to be photographed by the press, but posted an ‘artistic’ black and white picture of his feet in her hand.
Whether it be a star, publicist, producer, director, agent, or wannabe, everyone knows that nothing keeps the press hotter than someone who tries to elude them. Everyone also knowns that nothing infuriates the press quite so much as public figures who bemoan intrusions into their private life, while seeking to control the narrative so absolutely that they violate their own privacy by posting precious, artsie-tartsie photographs and ‘meaningful’ messages on their Instagram, Twitter and Facebook accounts. As Harry himself had observed when he turned twenty one, you cannot on the one hand demand privacy from the press and on the other violate your own privacy by revealing information about your private life as and when it suits you. Yet that is now precisely what he and Meghan started doing.
As they sought to gain absolute control over the information they imparted to the public, few people outside the press and palace realised just how dangerous a ploy they had embarked upon by trying to cut the press out of reporting on them. Once more, the couple had decided to change the game, this time by excluding the press from photographing Archie. Up to then, royal babies had traditionally been photographed by a well-known photographer, whose pictures would be disseminated throughout the media. That way, the royals would get positive coverage, the press would make money, which was becoming harder and harder since the advent of the internet, and the public would be kept informed.
Because of the threat the internet has presented to the media, it had become an increasingly important duty of the Royal Family to cooperate with the mainstream on such anodyne occasions as photo sessions with royal babies and other happy royal events. As stated earlier, the British press and the British Royal Family have a symbiotic relationship. Each needs the other. The existence of each furthers the security of the other while advancing the cause of freedom in Britain, a free and robust press being a guardian of democratic freedoms, and a constitutional monarchy being a preventative to the grabs against democratic freedom to which politicians are prone. You therefore undermine the media at your own peril - whoever you are.
All enlightened people understood this, and even made personal sacrifices, such as I made when I refused the Police’s invitation during Operation Weeting to complain officially against the Murdoch papers and the Mirror Group for having hacked my ‘phones. My reasons for inaction are relevant to this subject. During Operation Weeting, the Hacked Off movement was launched by public figures such as the actor Hugh Grant, who had been exposed for using the services of a prostitute, and Sir Max Mosley, whose penchant for prostitutes and Nazi paraphernalia had been written about in the tabloids with the public being reminded that his father, Sir Oswald Mosley, had been the head of the British Fascists, while his mother had been the former Diana Mitford, friend and admirer of Adolf Hitler. Despite my own personal suffering at the hands of the tabloids, I took the view that Britain needs a vigorous free press. Why should a few jaundiced celebrities muzzle the media out of spite for having had their debaucheries revealed, and in so doing, put everyone’s liberty at risk? I therefore told the Inspector who almost begged me to reconsider, ‘The price people like me have to pay for our privileges is a free press. There are already sufficient laws in place to protect our rights. Maybe some of them need beefing up, but we certainly don’t need new laws that muzzle the press so absolutely that they can’t have a go at us, or at crooked politicians.’
What Meghan and Harry were in effect doing was undermining the press by trying to cut them out and deal directly with the public through social media. Royals have an even more important part to play in the functioning of a free British press than public figures like Hugh Grant or Max Mosley. Yes, celebrities are tabloid fodder, and yes, it’s a two way street that frequently benefits both press and public figure. But the part the royals play is of far greater significance. I would go as far as saying that only an ignoramus, someone who is truly irresponsible, or someone who is utterly naive would seek to behave towards the press as Meghan and Harry now started to do. You do not push your hand into the lion’s mouth, tickle the back of its throat, scratch its tongue, as a parting shot pinch its lips, and expect to emerge unscathed. Of course, if you have on impenetrable armour and you wish to gain an advantage out of the lion’s response, that’s something else. Provocation then makes sense, especially if the provocateur or provocateuse intends to flip things and emerge intact as the lion’s pretended victim.
It was against this culture clash, and Meghan and Harry’s refusal to deal with its causes and effects, that the questions surrounding baby Archie’s arrival on earth were dealt with by both the press and the palace. There is no doubt that most British publications took a very responsible line. So did the palace. One of the royals
