In the kingdumb of the blind(ed by hatred): The Telegraph’s Harry and Meghan ‘scoops’ are ever more stupid
The British media's gaslight factory has a profitable sideline in flakey one-fact stories about the royal couple that doesn't play along with the protection racket.
Previously:
1. Hiding behind a headline: Telegraph journalist conveniently spins court claims against Prince Andrew's accuser
2. A tale of two Harrys: On the particular cruelty of the British press
3. Another Royal Rumble: The British media's racist royal commentators are shocked to be called racist
The Daily Telegraph looks like a newspaper — it has a front page, bylines, columnists, an editor (objectively the worst of all the Chris Evanses in the world), sports coverage and ‘funny’ cartoons — but it’s not one. The Telegraph is a hollowed-out shell filled entirely with pure ideology and pure stupidity mixed in a cocktail only the most tweedy, reactionary, royalist maniacs can stomach.
There’s no better example of how The Telegraph has abandoned news than in its endless royal reporting which flits between emetic enthusiasm for Kate, whose very touch can treat scrofula, and acid-drenched attacks on Meghan and Harry about minor (and often imagined) things that somehow still fill whole pages.
Camilla Tominey who leads the charge in the Sussex slagging, has repeatedly said that she would never print anything she “doesn’t write things [she] really believes to be true and haven’t been well sourced”. But the bar of things Tominey believes to be true seems to be so low a mouse would struggle to limbo under it.
Today’s ‘big’ royal ‘scoop’ from The Telegraph is a prime example. With a headline that defies parody — Exclusive: Harry and Meghan rejected Earl of Dumbarton title for Archie for containing word 'dumb' — it’s a single-fact story that should elicit a shrug whether or not that central tidbit is true or not.
Given that Harry is already Earl of Dumbarton when he visits Scotland — aren’t those unelected, enormously privileged monsters quaint — and that Archie will inherit that title automatically when his father dies, I’m leaning heavily towards the conclusion that the story is untrue.
But Tominey writes it all up with high drama as if she’s just revealed that the Queen was a Soviet spy all along — Agent Brenda — and regularly plays a round of canasta with Vladimir Putin. She begins:
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex rejected the title Earl of Dumbarton for their son Archie because it contained the word "dumb", it has emerged.
Multiple sources have told The Telegraph that both Harry and Meghan declined to use the title of Scottish nobility because they feared Archie might be bullied or attract unfortunate nicknames.
Showing robust confidence in Telegraph readers’ intelligence Tominey adds:
The word dumb is more prevalent in the US, where is it frequently used as slang for stupid.
Presumably, she pictures the entire readership as comprised of retired High Court judges and Home Counties majors for whom that perky popular beat combo, The Beatles, remain baffling even now.
The pomposity of newspaper journalism is at its most laughable when it applies the heightened language of the scoop to a tiny, tedious and inconsequential ‘fact’, which may even then be a fabrication. Saying “it has emerged” through “multiple sources” sounds better than the truth: “A handful of bitter gossips have told me something that could still be complete horseshit.”
The story — the most appropriate word for this latest fiction — continues:
A source said: “They didn’t like the idea of Archie being called the Earl of Dumbarton because it began with the word 'dumb' [and] they were worried about how that might look.”
Another insider added: “It wasn’t just Meghan who pointed out the potential pitfalls, it also bothered Harry.”
The revelation follows reports that relations between the couple and Prince Charles plunged to an all time low after he told them Archie will never become a prince because he wants a slimmed-down monarchy…
The link in that third paragraph goes to another Telegraph story which was also built around anonymous sources. This is par for the course in royal reporting — and much of the reporting generally in the British press — where new shaky claims are piled on top of old ones, giving the false impression of momentum and suggesting an organic ‘crisis’ when, in fact, its been created whole cloth by the newspapers themselves.
With nothing ‘new’ to add once she’s deployed the ‘fact’ about the Earl of Dumbarton title — which feels very much like a snide joke recounted as true to imply that Harry and Meghan are very ‘dumb’ themselves — Tominey pads out the piece by repeating previous stories. As I said before, this is a one-fact story where the fact itself is as dubious as a £49 note featuring the face of Alan Sugar in place of Alan Turing.
The Earl of DUMBarton ‘scoop’ comes the day after Tominey — to use the form beloved of the tabloids — “took to Twitter’ to say she’d received a death threat via her website. The statement obviously prompted a wave of sympathy from readers and hacks alike, and there’s never an excuse to abuse someone nor to bring their children into the argument. Perhaps it’s a lesson Tominey herself and her paper might also apply to their coverage of Meghan.
While there was no evidence either way on who sent the message to Tominey’s website — the email address used was fake — and inevitably some said it was not real, she was quick to point the finger at the Sussex Squad, the most fervent online supporters and defenders of Harry and Meghan.
In a piece published in March and headlined Harry, Meghan and me: my truth as a royal reporter, Tominey complained, “I've covered elections and extremism, but nothing compares to the vitriol I've received since I started writing about the Sussexes…” and went on to say:
Accusations of racism have long been levelled against anyone who has dared to write less than undiluted praise of Harry and Meghan. But even I have been taken aback by the vitriol on social media in the wake of the couple’s televised two-hour talk-a-thon, in which they branded both the Royal family and the British press racist while complaining about their ‘almost unsurvivable’ multimillionaire lives at the hands of the evil monarchy. And all while the rest of the UK were losing their loved ones and livelihoods in a global pandemic.
This is the same Tominey who wrote in response to the Oprah interview:
Those already doubting whether there would ever be any way back into the royal fold for the Montecito Two – also dubbed ‘Duchess Difficult’ and ‘The Hostage’ by palace staff – had their worst suspicions confirmed when Meghan then went on to accuse the Royal family, their staff and the British press of being, well, outright racists…
“Not only had Archie been denied a title and his own security detail – but an extraordinary conversation had also taken place behind palace gates about how dark his skin might be when he was born.
“Harry was later invited to expand on the issue but declined to do so, leaving the viewer guessing as to who the hell came out with this.
“Meghan said: ‘Those were conversations family had with him,’ but Harry refused to elaborate. The unfortunate inference was that Prince Philip may have put his foot in his mouth again, while the 99-year-old was in his hospital bed 5,400 miles away.
“Or perhaps it was the wearer of ‘racist’ brooches, Princess Michael of Kent? As we are never likely to know, we may as well consider them all white supremacists along with any journalist who has ever written anything vaguely negative about them.”
Look at those scare quotes around the word ‘racist’. They tell you a lot about the approach taken by Tominey and The Telegraph in general. The brooch worn by Princess Michael of Kent was racist and she knew precisely what she was doing when she picked that particular ‘blackamoor’ jewellery to meet the first mixed-race person to join the Royal family.
The Daily Telegraph will not call racism what it is when Meghan is the victim, in part because it wants to retain its right to attack, abuse, and insinuate. It also truly believes that it is not racist but just doesn’t like Meghan for… some reason. Qwhite a conundrum. Qwhite impossible to unpick.
In her article back in March, Tominey framed herself as the victim of the ‘toxic’ (“Britney Spears levels of toxic…”) online ‘mob’:
Having a hind thicker than a rhino’s, it wasn’t the repeated references to my being ‘a total c—’ that particularly bothered me, nor even the suggestion that I should have my three children put up for adoption. At one point someone even said it would be a good idea for me to drink myself to death like my mother, about whose chronic alcoholism I have written extensively.
No, what really got me was the appalling spelling and grammar. I mean, if you’re going to hurl insults, at least have the decency to get my name right.
…so-called #SussexSquaders think nothing of branding all royal correspondents ‘white supremacists’ regardless of who they write for, or sending hate mail to our email addresses, offices – and in some cases, even our homes…
While there’s no doubt that Tominey receives a lot of criticism about her stories and that some of that criticism tips over into abuse, it’s also quite useful for a journalist who regularly tosses out brickbats to be able to suggest that they’re really the one faces a hail of stones.
In the space of a matter of paragraphs in the March mea never-did-anything-wrong, Tominey writes first…
The royal press pack is the group of dedicated writers who cover all the official engagements and tours on a rota system, in exchange for not bothering the royals as they go about their private business. It was a shame this ragtag bunch, of which I am an associate member, was never personally introduced to Meghan when the couple got engaged in November 2017.
… then:
Contrary to the ‘invisible contract’ Harry claims the palace has with the press, royal coverage works roughly like this: good royal deeds = good publicity. Bad royal deeds = bad publicity. We effectively act as a critical friend, working on behalf of a public that rightly expects the royals to take the work – but not themselves – seriously.
So when a royal couple preaches about climate change before taking four private jets in 11 days, it is par for the course for a royal scribe to point out the inconsistency of that message. None of it is ever personal…
So there’s a deal but there isn’t a deal… right?
I read and review the British newspapers on a daily basis and it would be hard to miss the practice of placing a puff piece about Kate and William alongside yet another attack on Meghan and Harry. Similarly, the repeated insinuation that Harry was happy to cooperate with the press before he met his wife is bollocks.
In a montage of clips filmed long before he met Meghan, Harry explains:
I don’t want to sit around at Windsor because I generally don’t like England that much and it’s nice to be away from the press and the papers and the general shite that they write…
My father always says don’t read it, everyone says don’t read it because it’s always rubbish. I’m surprised how many people in the UK actually read it. Everyone’s guilty for buying the newspapers I guess but hopefully, no one believes what they read…
Of course, I read it, if there’s a story and something’s been written about me I want to know about what’s being said. All it does is upset and anger me that people can get away with writing the stuff that they do, not just about me, about everything and everybody. [Reporter: How far back does that mistrust of the press go?] I think it’s fairly obvious how far back it goes. To when I was very small…
If today's Earl of DUMBarton tall-tale had been written about Kate, it would’ve been an encomium to the awesome power of parents’ love and how the remarkable royals had done everything to ensure that gorgeous George was never bullied about his titles. Or, more likely, it would have never appeared, replaced instead with some more guff about Kate’s charitable deeds.
To slap the word ‘exclusive’ on an atom of gossip given to you by gossips and of literally no consequence whether it is true or not is to take the meaning of the word to Stretch Armstrong leaking toxic goo from his over-extended limbs breaking point. It is not a piece of incredible investigative journalism, it’s a writer jotting down some claims and ginning them up with hyperbolic language.
The common denominator in all Telegraph stories on Harry and Meghan now is a line that reads:
A spokeswoman for the Sussexes declined to comment.
It’s not surprising that Harry and Meghan don’t want to feed the Telegraph beast but it also explains why the paper continues to pump out vitriolic — there’s that word again — stories based on the thinnest of pretexts.
While William and Kate continue to comply with the protection racket with photo ops and toleration of grim spectacles like The Daily Mail printing calendars featuring their children, Harry and Meghan simply refuse to play along. And people like Tominey are livid.
There’s no chance they’ll ever apply their own ‘be kind’ advice. And when Tominey tweets “#stoptheonlinehate” it’s less that she objects to hate, but more that she thinks it should remain confined behind The Telegraph paywall where it can be effectively monetised.