Maggiemoo

From u/canellelabelle on X @ canellelabelle Unarchived link

TL;DR

William got injunctions to stop press publishing the grainy pap photo of Catherine. They issued their own (photoshopped) image. (Catherine supported him by issuing the apology).

The press issued the Kill order to the photo so the press can’t publish it.

W&C own the copyright to the original and only photo.

70m+ people have seen it on Twitter

Full article text:

The masculine Jawline and broad shoulders match the defiant and headstrong attitude indeed. Nature never makes a mistake📷 In the Past 24 hours the press finally went to Head with Prince William and it was a long time coming📷

Since his youth, William has evaded the press. With Catherine, they hoped they finally had the weak link; they now realised: Only Iron cuts Iron. Catherine is as headstrong, private and loyal as William is📷

So after 2 months of literally harrassing this man in articles and hate campaigns for a picture of HIS wife and getting nothing, the paparazzis supported by the World press, decided to invade the couple's privacy and capture some intrusive shots.

The World press wanted to publish them but Prince William, via palace lawyers, exerted tremendous pressure on the british press, AP, Reuters, Getty and AFP, to NOT publish the illegal pictures📷 That was a massive win for William that annoyed them to no end. Thus, they expected something Big in return..like the rights to Catherine first picture📷

To their dismay, the Wales pulled another historic blinder: Not only did they not get advance notice of the picture, but Prince William himself took the picture of his family, in the intimacy of their Windsor home, and Catherine edited it and posted it with her personal message for mother's day📷

That was a massive play; The press was robbed of their oportunity to make huge money by having rights to the picture and Now the picture was getting huge exposure on the Wales pages without any need for the world press. They got played on BOTH hands📷

So the World press decided to teach William a lesson and decided to retaliate with all their might, issuing a discrediting "Kill notice". They DEMANDED that not only the picture be pulled from their publishing papers but that the Wales DELETE THEIR OWN FAMILY picture from THEIR OWN SOCIAL MEDIA over THEIR OWN EDITING. They even put a community notes on X and restrictions on instagram against the picture📷📷📷

This crucial moment in the history of publishing house is where William officially BROKE the world press📷 The Fact that they were so livid at his continued evasion despite, their very public bullying tactics, that they had to out their own game is a Win📷 We witnessed the world press band together over "editing" issues, to bully a Man into serving his own wife on a silver platter for their consumption because she makes them big money📷

What happened next is another lesson in evasion tactics: Catherine once again took to X clarifying that she made the edits to their picture and politely apologising for the confusion while wishing everyone a good Mother's day as she had. One would think, "oh she caved". Not quite📷she pulled another blinder. Catherine is not asleep, she is fiercely backing William📷 The Press did not want an explanation, They WANTED W&C to hand them the Original of the picture so they would finally publish it and make money of it📷 William and Catherine said "Meh"📷

The same Picture with the same edits, William's now iconic picture of his wife and family, is the ONLY clear picture of Catherine. It is STILL UP, the community note and restrictions have been removed. It is Now the ONLY source of the picture. No one made money off It. The pic has now over 72 million views in 24 hours on X📷

So All in All, who pulled the blinder and came out victorious?📷 Prince William is still in control of his Wife's privacy as the world still doesnt know anything about Catherine's diagnosis or what is truly going on; The press is still mad and was still burned on both ends: No pap pictures published and no first pics of Catherine published📷

THESE are the defiant actions and the defiant face of the son who has learned from his mother's mistakes; from witnessing her trials with the press to losing her in a paparazzi car chase and swore to himself: 'Never Again'📷

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author: WorthSpecialist1066

submitted: March 12, 2024 at 09:03AM via SaintMeghanMarkle on Reddit

From the PR prospective she did it brilliantly

She owned it.

She sounded sincere.

She was very sweet in admitting a small mistake and even apologising for it.

She was humble.

And most importantly, she moved the focus on the audience by expressing hope we all had a very happy Mother's day.

Perfection. Excellently done.

We can all see how this particular woman could come up with the iconic "recollections may vary" phrase.

I’m sorry we spent £32 million on your heavily promoted wedding 

I’m sorry The King stepped in to walk you down the aisle 

I’m sorry we spent £1 million on your first-year wardrobe 

I’m sorry you only undertook 72 days of royal work

I’m sorry we gifted you and your husband the titles of The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Earl and Countess of Dumbarton and Baron and Baroness Kilkeel

I’m sorry we spent £4 million-a-year on your security

I’m sorry we hid your alarmingly shady past from the public 

I’m sorry we covered up your rampant bullying of young professional women and then covered up the results of the bullying investigation in order to protect you

I’m sorry we gifted you an 11-room house on the Windsor estate, for free

I’m sorry we footed the £3.2 million bill to renovate your house to your liking

I’m sorry we granted you the honour of marrying in the historic Royal Chapel at Windsor Castle

I’m sorry we gave you your own independent team of staff

I’m sorry we appointed you your own adviser and assistant to make the transition to royal easier

I’m sorry you were the first girlfriend to be invited to spend Christmas at Sandringham with Queen Elizabeth II and family

I’m sorry The Queen invited you to a theatre charity less than four weeks after marrying H - the earliest ever joint engagement with The Queen

I’m sorry we invited you to the funeral of the longest-serving monarch in British history after you continued to slander everything she ever worked for in multiple interviews and podcasts

I’m sorry we granted you, an American, your own coat of arms from the 500-year-old College of Arms

I’m sorry we didn’t silence you by making you sign any NDAs, allowing you to sign multi-million-dollar deals for books, interviews and podcasts

I’m sorry we’re the reason George Clooney, Oprah Winfrey and Elton John pretended to like you

I’m sorry we gave you the opportunity to co-write a cookbook, guest edit British Vogue, and ‘curate’ your own fashion capsule. 

I’m sorry we advised you twice not to wear those blood diamonds gifted by Jamal Khashoggi’s murderer

I’m sorry our support made you feel emboldened to behave appallingly towards staff and ticket-holders at Wimbledon

I’m sorry your behaviour on the Oceania tour angered your hosts and we covered it up by encouraging positive coverage from the press

I’m sorry we invited you to The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee after you’d called us all racist abusers on international television

I’m sorry we thought you’d like to be patron of the UK’s National Theatre, we didn’t realise you’re not interested in the theatre

I’m sorry nobody stopped you from wearing a maternity coat and announcing your 8-week pregnancy at the wedding of your husband’s cousin

I’m sorry you publicly announced your first pregnancy on Infant Loss Awareness Day

I’m sorry we lied to the press about the existence of the nude pictures you took of yourself, easily available on the internet

I’m sorry we let you live free-of-charge in a two-bedroom London property while the free five-bedroom country house we gave you was renovated

I’m sorry we introduced you to world leaders, high-ranking officials and A-list celebrities

I’m sorry we helped perpetuate your lie that your degree was in ‘international relations and theatre’ and not ‘communications’

I’m sorry for all the jewellery we gifted you, including a pair of expensive pearl earrings from Queen Elizabeth II

I’m sorry we helped perpetuate your lie that you worked at the US Embassy in Argentina for several months instead of attending classes at the Embassy school organised by the uncle you didn’t invite to the wedding

I’m sorry we loaned you the use of a historic diamond-encrusted tiara

I’m sorry we took an interest in what colour your future yet-to-be-conceived baby’s hair would be

I’m sorry we permitted you to only allow American press to the unveiling of your first child in Windsor Castle, as requested, instead of British press 

I’m sorry we helped cover up that you worked with the authors of Finding Freedom

I’m sorry for allowing you to keep all those freebies you’re definitely not allowed to keep

I’m sorry your husband, a prince, didn’t explain how to courtesy to The Queen 

I’m sorry we acquiesced to you inviting celebrities you’d never met before to your wedding

I’m sorry we didn’t clamp down on you monetising your official royal engagements

I’m sorry we respected your boundaries by not hugging on first meeting

I’m sorry we allowed you to mistakenly believe you were more popular than Catherine and William

I’m sorry for providing a team of highly-trained, expensive doctors at your disposal

I’m sorry we funded a household staff of cooks, cleaners and nannies for you

I’m sorry nobody asked if you’re okay.

So sorry about all that.

Thanks!

By Martin Clarke January 15, 2023

Like many Americans, I’ve gone on a real journey with Harry and Meghan. When they first got together, I loved everything about what they symbolized. I loved that she was a California girl. I loved that they seemed so genuinely in love. But by the time the Sussexes landed on that Montecito veranda with Oprah I had been reduced to just one reaction: Oy.

I didn’t think it could get more uncomfortable. I clearly suffer from a lack of imagination.

Next came the various deals: a reported $25 million for a Spotify podcast; a rumored sum of $20 million for Prince Harry’s just-published book; and then, of course, the eponymous Netflix series. Reader, I am not proud to admit this but admit it I must: I watched the whole thing. Somehow, six hours I will never recover later, I found myself nodding along to these lines from my friend Caitlin Flanagan: “When she was miserable, the way his own mother had been miserable, he didn’t do what his grotesque father had done—cheat on her, treat her like a broodmare, ignore her suffering; he moved her and his family far away.” But what I couldn’t get over was the extent to which the couple—Harry especially—blames the press for everything. The tabloids in particular are the subject of the Sussexes’ white-hot rage.

So we thought: Who better to hear from Martin Clarke, editor-in-chief ofdailymail.com from 2008 to 2022? He argues that Prince Harry’s deep hatred of the media is based on a delusion. In fact, writes Clarke, “the great revelation at the heart of Spare is that so much of the reporting Harry has objected to over the years turns out to be substantially true.” — BW

“Fiends.”

“Infected pustule on the arse of humanity.”

“Sad little men.”

“Scum of the earth.”

I guess I’ve been called worse. There is no shortage of people who spark deep resentment in Prince Harry, as revealed in the stew of self-pity that is his ghosted autobiography, Spare. The Duke of Sussex takes digs at his brother William (whose crimes include ignoring him at Eton, having a nicer bed in their shared boyhood room, and warning him against marrying Meghan Markle too soon); his distant and adulterous father Charles (who hung upside down in his underpants at Balmoral Castle like a bat); and Camilla (who he claims leaked stories about himself and William to rehabilitate her own reputation in the media).

But absolutely nothing matches the antipathy Harry feels toward journalists—and freedom of the press in general.

Rupert Murdoch is “evil.” No “human being in the 300,000-year history of the species (has) done more damage to our collective sense of reality,” he writes. Eat your heart out, Goebbels.

Photographers, or “paps” as the prince brands any journalist who’s ever picked up a camera, are as bad as the Taliban he “removed from the board” (i.e. blew away from his Apache helicopter as they fled on motorbikes) in Afghanistan. Indeed, the prince even manages to blame the press for a Taliban attack in September 2012—allegedly targeted at him—when he was based at Camp Bastion in Helmand Province after UK news outlets reported that he was there. This, despite the fact the British Ministry of Defense had formally announced the news a week earlier, and a US investigation found that the attack had been planned before he arrived.

On another occasion he complains about being “papped” with a girlfriend at an England rugby game at Twickenham … in front of 50,000 people. How dare the press take pictures of such an intimate moment? Harry’s obsession with the press so permeates every chapter of Spare one wonders if it’s some kind of psychological condition. He leaves nightclubs in the trunk of his bodyguards’ car rather than risk a harmless snap on a London sidewalk. He goes on honeymoon in a vehicle disguised as a removal van.

This is probably not surprising given that, almost immediately after his mother’s death, much of the public focus fell on the scooter-borne paparazzi who constantly pursued her. Memories of Diana weeping as journalists swarmed around her are deeply imprinted on his childhood. It was perhaps not healthy for him to be handed the secret UK file on her fatal accident, which included pictures of photographers snapping away at the wreckage containing his dying mother. In short, he thinks those photographers—and by extension, the press in general— killed her.

Of course, it later emerged that the paparazzi were nowhere near Diana, who wasn’t wearing the seatbelt that could have saved her life, when her drunken driver lost control and crashed the Mercedes into a concrete pillar. But for a boy who lost his mother when he was just 12, perhaps none of that mattered. And perhaps it never can.

Ironically, the great revelation at the heart of Spare is that so much of the reporting Harry has objected to over the years turns out to be substantially true.

The press was right about the drug use that started in Harry’s teens. He cheerfully admits to smoking large amounts of cannabis in the years up to and following his escape to California. He even cops to sampling chocolate-covered magic mushrooms from Courteney Cox’s fridge in Montecito. The press was right about allegations that Meghan bullied Palace staff (though Harry maintains it never happened). We were especially—and tragically—right about the friction among “The Fab Four.” In fact, by the time we got around to reporting about the tensions between the Cambridges (William and Kate) and the Sussexes (Harry and Meghan), they had been simmering for some time.

As an editor for 27 years, I can assure Harry that nobody sits around in editorial conferences plotting how they can screw over the Sussexes today. In my experience, senior journalists are much more likely to be plotting how they can screw over each other. But, above all else, the main gripe Harry has with the press is the way the media—the tabloid media in particular—allegedly hounded, smeared and demeaned his wife. So much so, he says, they ultimately had to flee for North America. In his book, Harry claims that the media’s unacceptable treatment of Meghan started the moment news of their relationship leaked on October 31, 2016.

But I went back and reviewed what the UK papers wrote about the then-Ms. Markle in the days following that report. And while there was plenty of comment about her biracial background, it was almost entirely in the context of how it showed Britain had become a color-blind society (yup, that was still a good thing back then)—even if some of it was clumsily worded. Most pieces lauded her for her beauty, style and acting career. In fact, several female columnists wondered why on earth she’d want to marry Harry. But what struck me most was how little coverage there was. Meghan was barely on the front pages and some days didn’t appear in most outlets at all.

Nevertheless, days later, by November 8, 2016, Harry had had enough. Pushed over the edge by an essay in HuffPo (of all places) that claimed “the mild reaction of Britons to this explosion of racism was to be expected, since they were the heirs of racist colonialists,” he overrode longstanding Palace practice to issue a statement. It said, in part: “The past week has seen a line crossed. His girlfriend, Meghan Markle, has been subject to a wave of abuse and harassment. Some of this has been very public—the smear on the front page of a national newspaper; the racial undertones of comment pieces; and the outright sexism and racism of social media trolls and web article comments… “Prince Harry is worried about Ms. Markle’s safety and is deeply disappointed that he has not been able to protect her.”

I can remember the morning that statement dropped. My colleagues and I felt shocked after giving the couple what we thought was pretty positive coverage.

Looking back, two things strike me. First, Harry casually conflates social media and The Media. While there are some horrendous racist trolls on social media, they are not the same as the press. (You see this same conflation, by the way, in the couple’s Netflix series, in which random, anonymous tweets by trolls are shown on the screen as a way of illustrating the hate the couple faced.) Secondly, this was the first instance of him playing the Diana card, suggesting that negative press coverage can cause physical harm. Most notably, he writes that he found Meghan weeping and saying she wanted to die if it would make “the press go away.”

Yet the constant resurrection of his mother fails to mention the biggest irony of all: When it came to playing the press, Diana invented the game. Like her son, she admitted to being academically challenged at school. But in her case, she was smart. Very smart. She secretly collaborated with Andrew Morton for the 1992 book that eviscerated Prince Charles and led to their formal separation. She personally cultivated influential Fleet Street reporters and had some of the industry’s most fearsome and ruthless editors wrapped around her finger. Interestingly, when it comes to Harry’s litany of grievances against the press, he has literally nothing to say about Morton’s book. Nor does he touch on Diana’s disastrous “three in our marriage” appearance on BBC Panorama with the now-disgraced Martin Bashir, who used forged documents to obtain the interview, playing on Diana’s fear that she was being spied on by royal aides, fueling the paranoia that eventually led her to ditch her police protection.

But all this goes to the heart of Harry’s delusion. Uncomfortable facts can never be allowed to intrude. He ignores the yards of hysterical, gushing coverage that surrounded his wedding. He fails to mention the UK press’s treatment of him as a hero for fighting the Taliban. He doesn’t mention all the ludicrously dumb articles we wrote lauding the so-called “Fab Four” when they were actually at each other’s throats. It’s why he won’t subject himself to anything tougher than fawning interviews, which allow him to pile nonsense upon nonsense. It’s why he can write an entire memoir bemoaning the invasion of his privacy while cheerfully trampling on that of his dearest and nearest, including his niece Princess Charlotte—now still only seven—whom he drags into the book to explain Meghan’s version of the infamous row with Kate over the ill-fitting bridesmaid dresses.

Even now he claims in interviews that Meghan wasn’t accusing the Royals of racism with her arch revelation to Oprah that unnamed members of the family speculated about what shade of skin color their baby would be. Oh no. According to Harry now: “The British press said that, right? Did Meghan ever mention ‘they’re racists’?”

Similarly, he believes he hasn’t increased the terrorist threat to his family by revealing his 25 “kills” in Afghanistan, which he relates with no more emotion than he does blasting pheasants—“hitting every target”—at Sandringham.  

Nope, it’s the press who incited retaliation by reporting the very words he wrote. Harry told Stephen Colbert, between shots of tequila: “My words are not dangerous, but the spin of my words is very dangerous.” He should have been a Jesuit. The problem for Harry is that he must cleave to his belief that the press and fellow royals are the architects of all his woes—or else he’ll have to confront some uncomfortable truths.

Such as he likely resents his “Pa” more than he admits for cheating on his mother. Such as a young woman who basically lived on Instagram might have Googled him at some point. Such as, maybe, William wasn’t brainwashed by the press when he confronted Harry over Meghan’s alleged bullying of Palace staff, which is still being vehemently asserted by some of the people involved. Maybe, just maybe, William heard about it or even saw it firsthand.

And so on.

What’s most staggering is that a man who has spent much of his life as third in line to the British throne has so little understanding of how his own country works.

It can’t have helped that, as he admits, he has no interest even in the history of his own family, let alone the evolution of his country from a feudal monarchy to a constitutional monarchy subservient to democracy—of which the much-flawed but vital British press is the daily embodiment. The Royal Family should have done more to educate Harry on how to conduct himself in a world where free speech, if not enshrined in the UK’s unwritten constitution, is a cornerstone of British public life. They should have made clear that dealing with the press, however distasteful it might feel, is essential for the Royal Family, who must get their message out to the public and keep inspiring the people’s love and devotion in order to survive.

What if the unthinkable had happened and the spare had one day been required—could even still be required—to step into the shoes of the heir? Was this man remotely prepared or even psychologically suitable?

What makes Harry’s intolerance of the free press and, by extension, free speech itself, so worrisome is that he is pushing at a dangerously open door.Harry—self-styled humanitarian, military veteran, mental-wellness advocate and environmentalist, according to his own book—bows to nobody in his espousal of every progressive cause. That includes the illiberal belief that there is no Truth but his Truth and that opposing views are not just a difference of opinion but dangerous “disinformation” that needs to be suppressed.