Is Meghan Manipulating The Media? Royal Editor Explains Impact Of Her Misleading Statement | GMB

duchess of sussex has apologized for misleading the high court saying she never intended to do so after she forgot she'd authorized a senior aide to brief the authors of an unofficial biography megan and harry had previously denied making any contribution to finding freedom is megan manipulating the media going to debate that this morning we're joined by itv news's royal editor chris firstly just to be absolutely clear chris where we're at the reason that all of this has come up again is because of an appeal by the mail on sunday um tell us what is at the heart of the story yes you might think that this uh court case would have gone away but uh no it hasn't it's back in court because the mail on sunday are appealing against that uh earlier decision by a judge in the high court now look i've sat through a lot of these uh court cases between megan and the mail on sunday it's not the most exciting way to spend your day but you know one thing was abundantly clear in those court cases was that megan and harry had always said that they had not cooperated with the authors of finding freedom they hadn't given them permission they hadn't put them in touch with their friends and yet uh we now learn from one of megan's former aides her former press secretary that actually she did authorize him to have a meeting with the two authors of finding freedom in fact it wasn't a short meeting it was a two hour long meeting um harry megan if he didn't have email exchanges with their press secretary during the day to discuss uh the meeting and that's why yesterday megan had to apologize to the court of appeal and say it wasn't her intention to mislead either the defendant the mail on sunday or the court so if you put that together with the other text messages we got yesterday between her and this press secretary uh then it wasn't really a good day in court um for megan at all right can i just chris can i just establish though the mail on sunday is not appealing over what was in or how they cooperated with finding freedom mail on sunday's um appealing over uh the summary judgments in over the case of the letter that megan wrote to her father thomas markle um where she says that five articles about that personal and private letter misused her private information infringed her copyright and breached the data protection act so why is the finding freedom cooperation an issue it's an issue because it goes to the heart of the the privacy case uh is the mail on sunday was arguing all the way through this that actually this letter wasn't private because she shared a draft with her former press secretary and he was speaking about that yesterday she sent him a draft he actually was in tonga on a recce for their uh upcoming tour and she shared some text messages with him talking about whether or not the letter would leak in other words whether her father would give it to the mail on sunday which she uh eventually did and even during the course of those text messages megan was you know referring to the fact that in the unfortunate event i quote here that it leaked it would pull at the heartstrings if i were to call him daddy she also said obviously everything i have drafted is with the understanding that it could leak so i've been meticulous uh with my words and it's the mail on sundays putting this case to say look if you take those text messages if you take the fact that she thought the letter would leak if you take the fact that actually she knew she was opening up a bit of her private life to the authors of finding freedom that's at the heart of this case about whether or not um the the letter was private and whether or not the mail as the high court found did breach her privacy okay all right chris thanks very much indeed we're joined by uh journalist and royal commentator emily andrews and broadcaster and diversity advocate ata jewel a very good morning to you both aside um does this undermine the idea that there is a a huge intrusion into the privacy of this couple's lives when we now know that there was cooperation with the authors of finding freedom and we know that megan has acknowledged that the letter that she wrote the private letter between her and her father that she wrote that she acknowledged it could be made public not at all i've always been team harry and team megan i think you know at one point meg was one of the most trolled women in the world uh really hateful things coming her way she's just trying to defend herself i completely support everything that she's done i think if you were in the same situation you would do the same thing um the letter is something which i think i completely relate having a very sort of toxic unhealthy relationship with my father as well where your good intentions could be weaponized against you that's something i relate to and millions of others who have um unhealthy relationships with their fathers can relate to so no i don't think it undermines um their position in my opinion that's uh obviously this is a very personal matter for them very delicate matter as well and when we hear they have defended themselves that they didn't collaborate with the authors of finding freedom and now suddenly it becomes apparent that they did brief one of their uh aides to talk to them and they did share some information with those uh authors regarding that book does that undermine their position at all for you well as the palace once said recollections do differ but i know that they've they've apologized they've moved on um and i mean in in my opinion it's not you know clutching your pearls that someone tries to defend themselves by you know acknowledging that an aide can sort of like you know green light something if that's what happened i don't think that is the biggest deal to me when the whole world was attacking this woman emily i think there's an interesting point there isn't that is just basically saying look that's not a massive surprise and it doesn't change their position and my belief in in their position for her and equally the understanding of this letter that she wrote to her father in the knowledge that it could well get leaked that's just her being shrewd isn't it obviously she doesn't want it to be leaked she wants it to stay private with her father but of course everything was being sort of forensically seen and there was a chance of being leaked so she was just being diligent wasn't she thinking carefully about the fact that if eventually people read this i want them to understand that i'm not so you know the sentiment behind it clearly well i think that would be very much better on this as she has outlined in her latest statement to the high court i think the key really to all of this is that she said this text message to her close to say when they're discussing the letter the words i've written i could never publicly say and it's so cathartic and it's so great to get out of my chest just in case it will eat by my father i've set out my position in full and i think that really goes to the heart of the issues for megan and harry in fact the issues potentially for the whole royal family and harry and megan breaking away megan went from being a little known actress on suits where she could totally control her publicity totally control her image it was all fluffy she had her lifestyle blog she could have you know freebie fashion stuff she had lots of lovely coverage and isn't she great she's thrust into this unrelenting pressure and spotlight of marrying into the world's famous most famous family and suddenly she couldn't control her image and that really really upset her now on the one hand you can say well of course she was you know that must have been incredibly difficult for her and stressful on the other hand i think these emails and text messages that the court case has made public and it's a fascinating glimpse by the way into the behind the scenes fascinations how the royal family are obsessed with positive publicity and it just shows how her image was incredibly important to her and she was absolutely ruthlessly focused on having a positive public image what was said in public about her really mattered and when you are that famous you can't control everything obviously many celebrities do but what we see here is a real sort of celebrity approach emily can i ask you as somebody with an enormous amount of experience in tabloid journalism um by trying to control one's image and what people write about you is there a danger make it worse yes absolutely because look we can we can there are pros there are cons about journalism about tabloid journalism but at the end of the day i think that if you most journalists you know we all abide by the code you know we hope to be impartial to it and and to report accurately but i think that if you try and exert too much control as the celebrity as the people around you i think that can have a deleterious and the opposite effect i think was fascinating in one of the emails that that megan's a jason canal have talked about an interview with vanity fair and he's rather sniffy about how to have loyalty vanity fair has gone i mean this is a huge bossy magazine published all over the world and he says crucially there's a new edition of vanity fair i will make sure that i call them and it's positive coverage and i think going forward we need to be a little bit more careful and i want to talk to the editor to make sure that don't worry ma'am the coverage will be great chris it's interesting isn't it our correspondent louisa james made this point in her in her report where she said you know originally this court case was brought about megan and harry protecting their privacy and all of a sudden through the appeal uh from the newspaper we are seeing more and as emily was saying uh further delving into the sort of inemaciations and how the world works from a pr perspective and privacy perspective within the palace i think that's entirely what happens when you really have a court case this is a an appeal of course because uh the the mail lost this and they lost it on a summary judgment in other words the judge said this whole thing didn't need to go to trial and found in megan's favor the mail on sunday wants the whole thing uh to go to trial and you you can see exactly why megan and harry don't want it to because every time this thing appears in court more and more details come out text messages are shared and quite sort of personal text messages between her and her former um communications secretary so i mean if this thing were to go to trial in other words if the mail on sunday was successful in this appeal then you know whatever happens that's going to open them up to much less privacy than perhaps they had when they were in the royal family and the the couple as we've said are so concerned about privacy but they are accused of being hypocritical about that because they then do deals with big international broadcasters during which they open up their lives their home their inner thoughts how and and even with these cases you know so much more detail comes out is it are they really after privacy or is this just a continual battle to get their own story out in their own words i think when with with harry megan what was very shocking and probably hurtful for them was the huge racial um undertones which they have mentioned before how they were talking you know every time megan was mentioned it was you know she's the descendant of slaves and other celebrities aren't spoken about like this they have done deals with netflix and other people which is part of the celebrity game it's part of public life it's very much a case of controlling your narrative which is nothing new i think the privacy and the things in my opinion that are very hurtful and intrusive is when you go for these areas like your family and trying to um dig up things like that i think that there should be levels and if we have like nothing from how princess diana and sarah ferguson were treated that there are lines in the sand that i think should be drawn and i think they're trying to draw it and they are a new generation i don't think she's putting up with nonsense in the same way other generations have and i say good on her there's sometimes there has to be a line in the sand of what is acceptable and not acceptable for your mental health for decency i think this is you know all bets are off it's a new game they're playing and i think go for it atta thanks very much indeed that's jewel emily andrews thank you very much chris uh i think that the case comes to an end today doesn't it yeah three days this week so um we may or may not hear more interesting things today and as i said at the beginning often you're sitting through these court cases and it's not interesting at all so let's see yeah glad you could come and share that with us though chris good to get your perspective as always thank you for joining us i'm not sure that the tabloids ever find megan and harry any detail about megan and harry anything other than interesting uh thank you for your text messages as well er says of course megan's manipulating the media good for her i say they manipulate us enough chris says she seems very controlling she likes to control the narrative and mrs r says exactly what emily was saying remember she's an actress she's manipulating the press her advantage because she's always controlled her own uh pr um and then guy says it's harry i feel sorry for uh it seems to me that she wants to be in full control of everything interesting hearing him talk yesterday he was talking um at an event a real wide panel about sort of the control of social media and the misinformation on social media yeah he says it's a global humanitarian crisis but what was really compelling was he said more than 70 of the hate speech about my wife on twitter could be traced to fewer than 50 accounts wow which is incredible isn't it when you think about there's that that sort of that focus from 50 accounts whoever they were being controlled by however they were being are they real people even if they are real people being generated by someone somewhere but there's also quite a lot of analysis that's gone into that yeah discover that fact so they've said they've come off any social media platform he said it simply isn't true that the challenge of misinformation is too big to fix or too big to solve and that's the point is that we all want the social media companies to try and control that a bit more to stop the misinformation getting out there to stop the trolling the abuse the racism and often they say we're doing our best it's just overwhelmed by the volume of it he disagrees he said it's not too big to fix and it's not too big to solve they've just got to put their minds to it yeah although one person's misinformation is another person's freedom of speech and that's you know at the heart of it as well

Channel: Good Morning Britain

Views: 396,490

Keywords: good morning britain, breakfast show, news, morning news, gmb, good morning britain interview, itv, susanna reid, Talk Shows - Topic

Id: IkhbVZRFaQE

Length: 14min 54sec (894 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 11 2021