Read on Twitter
A couple of weeks on and this story is still enraging the Twitter pitchfork mob. I wanted to try to put this in context in a long thread. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.express.co.uk/news/royal/1372544/meghan-markle-news-royal-family-latest-oprah-winfrey-instagram-Clevr-Blends-coffee/amp
FWIW I didn’t really detect palace fury, although others did. There was a sense that it was a bit tacky but, as I mentioned, my take on it was there was much more anger over Harry and Meghan getting involved in the US election campaign.
It is a sign of the huge changes in the past year though that Oprah Winfrey and Kim Kardashian have ended it by plugging a company in which Meghan has invested. In an orchestrated attack, the pitchfork mob took exception to my mention of tabloid TV and social media influencers.
I think the word tabloid is used as a lazy insult and shouldn’t be but it is ironic that the Sussexes refuse to deal with major British newspapers but have been ended up working with Oprah, who is many things including a pioneer of tabloid TV.
Here are a couple of many references. https://www.britannica.com/art/television-in-the-United-States/Tabloid-TV
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabloid_talk_show
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabloid_talk_show
I also mentioned social media influencers. Oprah has 19.2m Instagram followers and that plug for the vegan latte company is potentially worth millions. She is perhaps the original queen of influencers and has been regularly hailed for it. https://medium.com/@anthonymcguire/how-oprah-winfrey-created-the-influencer-playbook-1f9ff3655b64
Here are a few more references.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.racked.com/platform/amp/2018/3/6/17081942/oprah-celebrity-influencer
https://arcreactions.com/social-influencer-marketing-oprah/
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.racked.com/platform/amp/2018/3/6/17081942/oprah-celebrity-influencer
https://arcreactions.com/social-influencer-marketing-oprah/
Kim Kardashian has 196m Instagram followers and her social media plug, which looked unsolicited, is also potentially lucrative for the oat milk latte firm.
But @byrnesh, TV editor for Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers in Australia, accused me of bullying the Sussexes and claimed media treatment of them was a problem for our industry. Holly has written about the Sussexes and the media before. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailytelegraph.com.au/rendezview/holly-byrnes-why-prince-harry-needs-to-protect-meghan-from-becoming-the-next-diana/news-story/4385edc42048555c0ee286d556e50f36%3famp
I’m happy to debate this with Holly. I did point out that, like most people who take to social media to urge others to be kind, she had in the previous few days used Twitter to be unkind about others - in her case they included her PM, a famous cricketer and Murdoch’s @FoxNews
Holly’s own papers have run news stories and opinion pieces reflecting public criticism of the Sussexes in Australia. Here are a couple. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/woke-prince-harry-plays-the-race-card/news-story/46e45bfd21c31027d6bca010a94e5a61%3famp
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailytelegraph.com.au/entertainment/celebrity/kerry-parnell-its-time-to-bring-back-former-royal-bad-boy-harry/news-story/fa2e2ca2ec3648574ca53a29034cff98%3famp
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailytelegraph.com.au/entertainment/celebrity/kerry-parnell-its-time-to-bring-back-former-royal-bad-boy-harry/news-story/fa2e2ca2ec3648574ca53a29034cff98%3famp
There are many more. Megxit - named one of the words of the year by several dictionaries here - has been one of the stories of the year. So it’s natural the fallout will be reported and commented upon. Does Holly think her colleagues at @newscorpaus are bullies?
She also worries that media treatment of this story will create problems for our industry. I do think there are issues, particularly the way that websites write so many more stories than newspapers and heighten the sense of frenzy, but I think are much bigger problems.
The biggest is that people are consuming more news than ever but many no longer want to pay for it. In Australia, it looks to me as if the other major issue facing Holly’s papers is the demand for a Royal Commission into Mr Murdoch’a ownership of them. https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/australianz/murdochs-media-empire-under-scrutiny
She also upbraided me for the fact that Prince Andrew is still sitting at home at Royal Lodge. I’ve been writing about him and Epstein for years but, as far as we know, he has not fulfilled his pledge (first reported by me) to help a US investigation into Epstein.
It’s important to stress that, although serious allegations have been made, the US authorities have said they only want to interview Andrew at this stage as a witness, not as a suspect.
Virginia Roberts Giuffre, the woman who has made allegations against Andrew, was living in Australia last I heard. It’s surely as much a question for the media in Australia, including Holly’s papers, and the US why Andrew is where he is. Why is it only a UK media failure?
Twitter is not the best forum for nuanced debate but I hope some will appreciate my efforts to engage and debate on this. Some of my colleagues will think me mad to even indulge people on this platform, especially those hiding behind anonymity.
For me that is one of the biggest problems for western democracy. Many accounts may be Russian or Iranian bots. Clearly, there are many mentally ill people here. But anonymity on social media has given a platform for others to orchestrate abuse and worse against journalists.
I only saw a fraction of the abuse directed at me in the last few days but I find it particularly astonishing that some spent Christmas Day spewing poison. One anonymous account, named after an American actress known for liberal politics, spent all day abusing the media.
How damaged must you be as a person and how awful must your life be to spend all Christmas Day posting insults about journalists and others? I enjoy debate but hope that trolling and abuse on social media will fade away in 2021. Requiring people to use their real IDs would help.
