LONDON — Bullying, attacking and inciting, toxic.
This is how Prince Harry has described Britain’s press. His wife, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, blamed the media for suicidal thoughts, and Harry said it was partly responsible for their departure from the U.K., in their interview with Oprah Winfrey on Sunday.
Despite their pleas and various legal actions, the tabloids are unlikely to change, experts say.
“The business model of all media is finding something that people want to talk about,” said Adrian Bingham, author of “Tabloid Century: The Popular Press in Britain, 1896 to the Present.”
For the past week, coverage of the couple and their interview has dominated the front pages of newspapers and been the subject of radio and TV news broadcasts.
“What is so useful for the press about the royal family is they unite generations,” Bingham said. “TV stars or social media stars appeal to a certain demographic, whereas the royal family, because of its prominence in British society, is something everybody can be interested in,” he said. “It has been a soap opera at the heart of British life for the last few centuries.”
That soap opera is now playing out in real time and impacting the media, too.
Piers Morgan, co-host of the “Good Morning Britain” breakfast news program and an outspoken critic of Meghan, resigned from his post Tuesday. Earlier that morning he stormed off the set when he was challenged by one of his colleagues for saying that he doubted Meghan’s…
