[imagesource: ITN Productions]

When South African Josh Pieters and his pal, Archie Manners, made that YouTube video with the message to not believe everything you hear about the Sussexes, a number of “royal experts” took a knock.

Pieters and Manners were able to solicit the opinions of four royal commentators ahead of the premiere of the Oprah Winfrey interview with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

All four royal insiders – Dickie Arbiter, the queen’s former press secretary, Majesty magazine Editor-in-Chief Ingrid Seward, and royal commentators Richard Fitzwilliams and Victoria Arbiter – eagerly commented on nonsense claims from the interview despite not yet having seen it.

Known for their controversial social experiments, the YouTube pranksters managed to turn the industry standard of getting a pre-record on its head.

Each royal insider came out looking like a putz for commenting on made-up claims:

It has now come to light how much this prank ending up costing one commentator, Victoria Arbiter (pictured in the header image), who is the daughter of Dickie, the Queen’s former press secretary, and a now-former CNN commentator.

The Telegraph reported how the single mother of one found the “onslaught” in the aftermath of the video to be “relentless”, leaving her without any income and with “acute anxiety and depression”.

Arbiter has said that the YouTubers “destroyed my life as I knew it”, inspiring her to think about suing the hoaxers:

Victoria Arbiter was “cancelled” by CNN, the US television news channel, and suffered horrific online abuse..

Ms Arbiter, 48, who lives in New York, is now considering legal action against the two London-based hoaxers in an attempt to restore her reputation. The prank, broadcast on YouTube, has cost Ms Arbiter, a single mother, tens of thousands of pounds in lost earnings over the past year. She believes she is the victim of fraudulent misrepresentation.

Manners and Pieters used the fake company Beneath the Fold, paying Arbiter a fee of £300 (which was apparently never cashed) to give her take on the Oprah interview two days before it would air.

Arbiter has defended herself by saying that providing a pre-record is recognised industry practice and “she was merely trying to help out what she thought was a legitimate programme maker”.

She also argues that the YouTube video had been heavily edited, leaving out the parts where she had been uncomfortable commenting.

Arbiter had been working for CNN for eight years, receiving an annual retainer from them for her work as a royal insider, but a new contract was cancelled after the YouTube video came out.

Her lawyers at Kingsley Napley already managed to get Arbiter removed from the YouTube video, but I suppose the damage has been done, proving that to some extent, royal experts do tend to bend the truth.

The YouTubers had “wondered whether people would say things that weren’t necessarily true to purely jump on the buzz”, which “it turned out that they would”:

“It was purely to experiment whether people would talk about something that hadn’t happened yet in a sector that they are meant to be experts in,” Pieters said.

“We gave them facts, which weren’t facts, and they spoke about them as facts.”

Ultimately, the take-away from Manners and Pieters is that normalising pre-recorded interviews can’t just be swept under the carpet as an industry standard.

Nobody deserves to be subjected to online abuse and harassment like Arbiter has. Perhaps in time she will find a way back in to broadcasting.

[source:telegraph]