Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, and husband Prince Harry had their team contact the BBC to tell them to make sure panels discussing their tell-all interview with Oprah Winfrey were not populated by “old white men”, according to reports.
A public relations staffer from the couple’s Beverly Hills-based company, Archewell — their earlier ‘Sussex Royal’ brand had to be scrapped after the Queen ruled it could not profit so directly from their royal connections — contacted the British broadcaster telling them to ensure a “broad range of contributors” were used for any post-mortem examination of their sit-down with the talk show host, in which Meghan complained her son was not made a prince and alleged that racially-charged remarks were made about him, among other things.
“The BBC by its very nature has to be impartial at all times,” said a source in comments reported by the Sun, referring to the publicly-funded broadcasters charter obligations — more honoured in the breach than the observance, according to some conservative critics — to keep its output balanced and officially neutral.
“[T]o be told how to conduct their coverage of a major news event by a PR person acting on behalf of Harry and Meghan is a bit strange to say the least,” the source added testily.
“This is the UK, not China. You can’t tell the BBC how to conduct its journalism, which frankly, was more than fair and balanced.”
The official line from the BBC was that “While we are contacted by PRs all the time, we would never confirm whether the representatives of anyone had been in touch.”
“We had a broad range of voices on our output and don’t believe there are any issues,” a spokesman added.
The claims Meghan and Harry tried to put pressure on the BBC to cover their interview in a certain way come as it is revealed that she formally complained to broadcaster ITV after controversial media personality Piers Morgan said he did not believe her claims on Good Morning Britain, setting a train of events in motion which concluded with his resignation from the show.
The head of the Society for Editors press body, Ian Muray, also found himself cancelled in the post-interview fallout, albeit more directly. After he responded to her claims of undue harassment from the media by saying that “The UK media is not bigoted and will not be swayed from its vital role holding the rich and powerful to account following the attack on the press by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.”
This resulted in an irresistible pressure campaign for his resignation from fellow journalists at left and left-liberal outelts such as the Huffington Post and Guardian, as well as the establishment Financial Times.
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