[imagesource: Netflix]

The British media have gone full steam ahead with that ‘declaration of war’ angle in response to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Netflix documentary trailer.

Reporters are smearing the couple with red paint days before their doccie, Harry & Meghan, is released to the public – watch out for the first few episodes arriving tomorrow, December 8.

It is no longer clear who started the war, as both sides are playing blame games and throwing bombshell balls into each other’s courts – on one side, Meghan and Harry, on the other, seemingly everyone else.

The Guardian is playing it down the line:

With just days to go until the Duke and Duchess of Sussex release their Netflix series, newspapers are turning a documentary about how the media treated the couple into a story about how the couple are treating the media.

While the Palace and the British Royal Family themselves have remained relatively quiet, the media is going full-on with fire and pitchfork-wielding rabid royal reporters taking no prisoners.

There was the teaser trailer for Harry & Meghan, which really had Sarah Vine at The Daily Mail irate, calling the video out for its “weapons-grade narcissism and a Biblical level of betrayal”.

Then came the actual trailer and the really sharp UK media talons.

It’s a pity that not one but four or so images used in the royal-adjacent couple’s doccie were from completely unrelated contexts and thus debunked as being misleading.

There was that shot of amassed photographers at what turned out to be a Harry Potter premiere (check the image up top), as well as footage of cameramen who were filming former glamour-model Katie Price arriving for a court appearance, not paparazzi harassing Harry or Meghan.

Another is footage of Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen leaving his New York apartment, while one other is a little off the mark, too:

Robert Jobson, the Evening Standard’s royal editor, criticised another dramatic shot of a photographer’s lens peering down on the couple with their newborn child Archie. Jobson insisted it was taken with their approval by an accredited press photographer at Archbishop Tutu’s residence in Cape Town.

He tweeted:

This photograph used by @Netflix and Harry and Meghan to suggest intrusion by the press is a complete travesty. It was taken from a accredited pool at Archbishop Tutu’s residence in Cape Town. Only 3 people were in the accredited position. H & M agreed the position. I was there. pic.twitter.com/nvjznlloLF

— Robert Jobson (@theroyaleditor) December 5, 2022

While The Guardian points out that the Sussexes are suing the majority of British newspaper proprietors on various grounds, other more catty newspaper outlets, the very one’s being sued, are trying to tear Harry and Meghan apart.

Here’s the one, the only for extreme Sussex hate and dissent, The Daily Mail‘s latest Vine headline – ‘SARAH VINE: Harry and Meghan are gaslighting the entire nation while lining their pockets with misery’.

Jeez, Sarah, calm your over-beating heart. Two things stand out from the trailers, she said:

First, the weaponisation of Princess Diana and her own experience as a royal consort in order to elevate Meghan. It’s hardly surprising: Harry has mentioned his wife before in the context of his mother, but this goes one step further.

…But when you think about it, it’s a really cheap shot, not only because it’s effectively monetising Diana’s life (and death); but also because, let’s not forget, Harry isn’t Diana’s only son. One can only imagine how Prince William must feel about Harry appropriating their late mother in this way.

And second:

Second, race. ‘It’s about race,’ says one of the talking heads in this trailer. Harry and Meghan left because the Royal Family — and, it would seem from this, most of the British media — are racist. Really? But I thought you just told us it was all about history repeating itself? Diana wasn’t mixed race, was she? So how can it be racist? Make up your minds, guys.

That’s an interesting take considering Lady Susan Hussey, William’s godmother, was recently accused of racism by a guest who was partaking in a charity event at Buckingham Palace.

The Telegraph was more eloquently scathing about the Harry & Meghan situation, empathising with the late Princess of Wales and her other son – “Diana would be appalled at the damage Harry is doing to William” reads the headline – by appearing to make up a fantastical plotline for The Crown.

I am not sure how to process it, so go ahead and check it out for yourself. The puffy opinion piece ends off rather chillingly:

Tomorrow night, the Sussexes’ Grievance Show will pander to what Harry himself once damned as the “incessant need to find out…  what goes on behind the scenes”. I hope the public has grown weary of their whingeing. How helpless and how sad the King must feel as he agonises over whether to cut the prodigal son loose or leave the door ajar, as a father’s love says he must.

What does the Sovereign he now is say? The late Queen would not have hesitated. In three weeks, Charles III makes his first Christmas broadcast and we will know his choice: the Crown or family, truth or fiction; which is it to be?

We cannot forget that Harry and Meghan signed a deal with Netflix and Spotify, worth more than £100 million combined, and needed watchable, viral content to make it all work out.

Again, there is so much royal raucous it is hard to think straight and decide who is right or wrong, truthful, or fictitious.

I am calling Switzerland on this one. Keep me out of it.

[source:guardian&dailymail&telegraph]