ITNTW: The Monarchy and Media’s Dangerous Relationship

An early leak of Prince Harry’s book; Spare, has sparked controversy and interest all over the world. The book is the biggest insight into the life of the British Royal family since Princess Diana did her tell all interview with BBC Panorama.

Spare delves into Harry’s life growing up in the Royal family and his perspective looking out into the world from the inside of a highly tense and monarchical family. The book reveals private conversations and confrontations between Harry and his family and how this led to his split from the institution. Do the Royals have a PR team at this point? It’s already tarnished reputation is at stake upon this book release. But just like your everyday person, Harry also shares his struggles with anxiety and of course, the grief of losing his mother Princess Diana.

Harry does not shy away from emphasising his hatred for the news media and press, as he continues to blame them for chasing his mother to death and his very public falling out with his family. Harry in particular calls out Rupert Murdoch as an evil media figure for repeatedly reporting false claims about Harry & Meghan that were damaging to their career, image and personal wellbeing.

So how far will the press go at the cost of innocent lives, for a quick dollar? Paparazzi continued to take photos of Princess Diana as she died when she got into a car accident with none of them stopping to help her. The press has religiously criticised Meghan’s race and how she did not fit into the Royal Family, most recently in Jeremy Clarkson’s newspaper column in the Sun. News media allegedly obtained, and released, private letters Meghan had written to her dad containing personal information.

There seems to be a lack of ethics and morals when it comes to the press and news media when it comes to the Royal Family. It’s not new information that there are diehard Royal fans that will eat up any information they can get but it raises the question of how far will the media go to get more reads.

Media has an important role to play in society. It is important to take human emotion and wellbeing into consideration when writing negative stories at the expense of someone else. From a PR perspective, the media and press have significant positive impact with PR success however from a personal perspective, compromising people’s mental state and wellbeing over false allegations is not worth a quick dollar.

Written by Tilly Powell, PR/Influencer Coordinator at InsideOut PR and #AsSeenOn