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Following accusations of racism against British tabloids made by UK Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle during the controversial interview with host Oprah Winfrey, there has been much upheaval in the British press. The Society of British Publishers, which brings together some 400 members of the national and local press, has rejected accusations of racism against the media, but the matter has opened a wide discussion among journalists and experts on whether the British press, in particular the conservative The tabloids are not inclusive enough.
Following the interview with Winfrey, the Society of British Publishers issued a statement dismissing accusations of racism in the newspapers and clarifying that the UK media “are neither prejudiced nor intolerant”.
However, the press release from the Society of Publishers was widely criticized, including by more than 250 journalists, writers and academics, who signed an open letter challenging their positions. Among the signatories are 60 journalists from guardian YObserver, numerous freelancers and several black journalists: according to them, “the total refusal to admit that there is no form of intolerance in the British press is ridiculous”.
– Read also: What about the interview with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle?
The journalists said that the Society of Publishers “is incapable of recognizing reality” and above all does not address the problem of the lack of diversity in British journalism: in particular, according to them, there is a lack of representation of different ethnic groups in the executive roles of the press, and this “contributes to the negative narratives” that are read in the country’s media. According to data provided by the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists, in fact 94 per cent of journalists are white.
On Wednesday, after the criticism received, the Society of Editors published a note to clarify that “there is still much work to be done in the media to improve diversity and inclusion.” Chief Executive Officer Ian Murray resigned so “the organization can begin to rebuild its reputation.” At the same time, television reporter Piers Morgan was fired from ITV – the channel that aired Meghan and Harry’s interview on Monday night in the UK – for saying they “didn’t believe a word” of what Markle had said. After Morgan’s comment, the UK’s regulatory agency for communications companies, Ofcom, had received more than 41,000 complaints.
– Read also: Do tabloids treat Meghan Markle worse than Kate Middleton?
The best-selling newspapers in the UK are dodgy tabloids that are mostly read by white, elderly and basically conservative people. These newspapers often feed on false or exaggerated news, which is mostly commented on with a moralistic slant: for this reason, Harry’s relationship with Meghan Markle, an American, divorced, older than him, of African American origin, has been since then immediately targeted by the tabloids. . The problem of how the tabloids talk about the royal family has been widely discussed.
In 2016, when Harry and Meghan had just started dating, Harry reported that some photographers had tried to break into their home and that newspapers had tried to bribe their ex-boyfriends into rumors about her. Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall and wife of Prince Charles, was also described by the tabloids as a “destroyer of families” for having long been Charles’s mistress. the Financial times said that in 2006, almost ten years after his death, the Daily express he had published 47 first pages on Lady Diana.
On Wednesday morning, two days after Meghan and Harry’s interview with Winfrey was broadcast in the UK, the home page of the Daily mail (Mail online) had 20 different articles talking about it.
In an interview with Winfrey, Harry said that the royal family has signed a kind of “invisible contract” with the tabloids for fear that the newspapers “will turn against them.”
According to Harry, the problem is that if members of the royal family treat these reporters well and give them ample space, the tabloids will treat them well; If they try to escape media coverage or refuse to collaborate with them, as Harry and Meghan did last year, when they decided to become more independent and manage their communication more independently, then they run the risk of being attacked. And tabloid pressures and racism were among the reasons the couple decided to stop actively joining the monarchy and leave the UK.
Camilla, like Meghan, spoke openly about the hostile treatment she had suffered from the press, but she did so in an interview with the Mail on sunday, another conservative tabloid from the same publisher of the Daily mail. Penny Junor, Camilla’s biographer, said the duchess was “a decidedly frowned upon and vilified woman,” but that she managed to “turn things around simply by being nice to the people who take care of her at work.” Camilla “is different,” Junor said, “she knows the name of every journalist who follows the royal house, she knows their children.”
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