The true target of Prince Harry’s anger is the press, and particularly the tabloids. He called it the “devil” in his ITV interview with Tom Bradby on Sunday night.
That’s a very disturbing way of describing newspapers in a free society. In some cultures, devils are considered phenomena to be hunted down and exterminated.
Harry may not actually want to kill the press, but he did tell Bradby that he wants to “change” and “monitor” them. He claimed the media is “at the epicenter of so many problems across the UK where people are suffering [and] I’ll try to make a difference.
Do we need to worry? Does a somewhat confused and intellectually inept 38-year-old man living 6,000 miles away in California really pose a threat to a free press?
The true target of Prince Harry’s anger is the press, and particularly the tabloids. He called it the “devil” in his ITV interview with Tom Bradby on Sunday night.
It hardly seems likely.
Still, I think Harry’s attitude toward newspapers enlightens him. His narcissistic outbursts may have helped reduce his following, but there are still some young people who revere him as a progressive force.
They see him and Meghan as rebels, eager to engage with interests and the establishment, and to champion important causes close to their hearts, such as climate change or anti-racism.
I see him differently. To me, Prince Harry is a legitimate and extraordinarily privileged person whose views even the most odious aristocrat of the 18th century would have considered standard. His attacks on a free press fall into this category.
In his deep hatred of newspapers that speak their mind and his desire to contain them, he reveals himself as a deeply illiberal figure. These are views associated with tyrants who cannot endure freedom.
Am I exaggerating the case? Maybe, but only slightly. Prince Harry doesn’t, of course, carry the ideological baggage of the average despot. Nor am I suggesting that he longs to imprison thousands of people. Nonetheless, his attitude towards the media is deeply undemocratic.
What amazes me is how utterly misguided his analysis (if that’s not too high a word to describe his venomous ramblings) of the media really is. One could at least respect him as an iconoclast if he hadn’t so spectacularly grabbed the wrong end of the flagpole.
Because his theory, revealed to Bradby and elaborated in his book, is that the royal family and the tabloids are symbiotic. He shared with Bradby that some royals have decided “to go to bed with the devil”.
According to Harry, they and newspapers have concocted a “distorted narrative” about him and Meghan that has literally driven them off our shores. During the ITV interview, he did not provide a single example of this allegedly heinous behavior and a softening Tom Bradby only weakly pressed him.
Harry may not actually want to kill the press, but he did tell Bradby that he wants to “change” and “monitor” them
Prince Harry announced that he believed the tabloids’ main plotter was Queen Consort Camilla. In an interview with American journalist Anderson Cooper, he brazenly described Camilla as a “bad guy” who “swapped information” to rehabilitate her image.
It’s true that several years after the death of Harry’s mother, Diana, in 1997, Camilla often received unfavorable coverage in many newspapers, reflecting public opinion at the time. She was portrayed as the mistress who undermined Charles’s marriage to Diana.
But after a few years, Camilla’s treatment through most titles gradually improved. Harry attributes this to a relationship she allegedly had with the press.
He told Bradby: “All the newspapers had stories about her private conversation with Willie, stories that contained pinpoint details, none of which, of course, came from Willie.
“They could only have leaked from the one other person present.” Namely Camilla.
It never occurs to Prince Harry that the newspapers became more sympathetic to Camilla Parker-Bowles than she was then, largely because they recognized her as a good athlete who didn’t try to justify her past misconduct and, moreover, simply fell in love was with Karl.
As for Harry’s claim that Camilla leaked stories to the press, it can be disproved in one instance. A story about her first friendly encounter with Prince William appeared in the Sun newspaper after a personal assistant told her husband, who was unwisely gossiping with someone connected to the Murdoch Empire. The assistant has resigned.
I would venture to say that some members of the royal family have leaked stories about their courtiers to the press over the years, but it’s preposterous and naïve to conclude that this was part of an orchestrated attempt to destabilize Harry and Meghan.
Royals are not puppets of the press as – if they are sensible – they realize they can be bitten as well as praised. The wise know how to take the rough with the smooth. If only the hypersensitive Harry and Meghan had learned something from Camilla’s pragmatism.
Harry claimed the media is “at the epicenter of so many problems across the UK where people are suffering [and] I’ll try to make a difference. Pictured: Prince Harry’s memoir Spare
As for the newspapers, it is ridiculous to assume that they would make a collective pact not to criticize their alleged collaborators within the royal family. On any given day, one newspaper will have praised Prince Charles for who he was while another criticized him. The same newspaper may pat him on the back one month and scold him the next.
Prince Harry and Meghan have come up with an outlandish theory about the royals’ alleged connivance to explain what they see as unfavorable treatment from the press – when in fact they enjoyed almost ecstatic coverage before their 2018 wedding and many months afterwards.
Whether out of paranoia or just plain insanity, Harry has demonized members of his family and misrepresented the press, and based on his twisted theories he wants newspapers to live up to his values. That smells like tyranny.
Of course, I’m not denying that newspapers may have been unfair to the hypersensitive couple at times. A recent example was Jeremy Clarkson’s silly fantasy in The Sun about Meghan having to “parade naked through the streets of every city in Britain”. It was terrible and the newspaper rightly apologized.
But that was a mainstream press aberration that conveniently associates Harry with social media, often a sewer of malice. He claims, without providing evidence, that these inconveniences are inspired by newspapers.
If only Harry and Meghan had learned, like most royals, to savor the praise and disregard the barbs. As King Charles Harry said, if you don’t like newspapers, you don’t have to read them.
Temporary disapproval is the inevitable lot of every public figure. The politician Enoch Powell (who was right about some things) once wisely said that “politicians who complain about the press are like sailors who complain about the sea”. That’s how it is with royals.
Harry and Meghan cannot understand this. Like the vainest kind of celebrity, they want to be portrayed on their own terms and cannot tolerate interference with an image of perfection.
So Prince Harry wants to muzzle the press. He is the illiberal voice of power.
I doubt it has occurred to him that if he bans the press he must ban himself as he is infinitely rude and has less respect for his family’s privacy than any newspaper ever has.