The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have announced they are to radically change media access to their official engagements, and will no longer participate in the traditional “royal rota” system, escalating their war against British tabloids.
The royal rota system has been used by Buckingham Palace for decades, allowing access to royal engagements to accredited correspondents on UK newspapers on a sharing pool basis to ensure maximum press coverage with minimum interference to the engagement itself.
In an announcement on the couple’s official website, which accompanied a statement saying they would “step back” as senior royals, they said their intention was to speak directly to the public through social media, and would deny automatic access to some members of the press pack who regularly follow the royals.
Prince Harry has accused tabloids of conducting a “ruthless” campaign of vilification against his wife, Meghan. He was scathing about some royal correspondents who covered the couple’s tour of South Africa in a furious statement he issued in October in which he said the “positive coverage” of the tour only exposed the “double standards of this specific press pack” who had also vilified his wife almost daily for nine months.
The Sussexes said on their website: “Britain’s royal correspondents are regarded internationally as credible sources of both the work of members of The Royal Family as well as of their private lives. This misconception propels coverage that is often carried by other outlets around the world, amplifying frequent misreporting.
“Regrettably, stories that may have been filed accurately by royal correspondents are, also, often edited or rewritten by media editorial teams to present false impressions.”
In addition, the couple wants to bypass the rota when issuing photographs to ensure publications do not profit from the images. Historically, they said, they would be expected to release an image to the royal rota – “of which four of the seven are UK tabloids” – either simultaneously or in advance of releasing it in their on social media platforms. “This formula enables those select publications to profit by publishing these images on their websites/front pages.”
Now the couple intends to engage with “grassroots” media organisations and “young, up-and-coming journalists”, to invite specialist media to specific events and to provide access to “credible media outlets focused on objective news reporting to cover key moments and events”.
