Kate Middleton showed us everything wrong with the UK
It's quite a lot if you haven't guessed x
The case of the missing Princess of Wales kept us entertained for weeks. Everyone was asking where Kate Middleton was, which was funny for a few reasons. Firstly, it is so unbelievably rude to refer to her by a name she hasn’t used for nearly 13 years!
Secondly, Palace sources already said she was ill. They didn’t give details but didn’t lie about her being sick; they just didn’t spread her doctor’s notes around the Court Circular in The Times.
The crux of its beauty was that it was just so needlessly dramatic. Kensington Palace gave statements to Page Six, which is like Downing Street sending blind items to DeuxMoi. The AP kill notice! The whispers of an affair! Stephen Colbert’s Late Show monologue just randomly dropped in an affair joke! No way was it a divorce!
Please, Kate has worked HARD to be where she is. Not only did she have to convince the entire British aristocracy she was not some new money dolt, but she also had to fight off the entire St Andrew’s class of 2005 and then all those Sloanes in Mahiki to get to where she was.
Then, she had to watch his foppish good looks crumple in that Mountbatten-Windsor way. If the infidelity rumours were true, the single life would not liberate Kate. Being the next Diana is not an option for her because, well she doesn’t have the star power. Also, could you imagine her doing a Matt Hancock-style reality TV tour? No, you can’t. She probably shudders looking at Sarah Ferguson.
The drama was not enough to make it so fascinating. It was so good because it was a story of media distrust, not of a missing princess. The reasons for not divulging about Kate’s conditions might be justified, but they’d already fucked it. For a series of well-documented reasons, the mainstream British press is dire. One thing it loves to do is to bootlick with its royal reporting.
After Diana, the crown collaborated with the most prominent newspapers to reign in what it published about the family. William and Harry were able to go to school and university without the prying eyes of Rupert Murdoch. Notable exceptions like Emily Maitlis’ interview of Prince Andrew on Panorama about his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein are such because they are so rare.
Their deference to anyone titled was pushed mainly aside for Meghan Markle. Questions have bubbled about why the British press is so vitriolic to her. The answer seems to be a mixture of her being annoying, American, and Black. One of these is not like the others.
However, there is another reason why the news market is leading to such low trust. It isn’t mainly British but rather capitalistic. If you’ve not been lucky enough to get this rant from me in real life, the digital-first, ad-supported revenue model of news is naughty. It is awful for the reader and the journalist. It emphasizes quick, shoddily reported and edited stories driven by Google search traffic. No one really wants to engage, and no one really wants to write it.
Anyway, one of the drivers of the KateGate furore was the sneaky little ploy known as an SEO explainer. For the unacquainted, these are follow-up pieces to trending news stories. Usually, an editor will look at the numbers and push for a reporter to put together a rundown of everything on the internet you can find.
The hope is that it becomes the first result when you put the key search terms into whatever search engine you use. Then, hey presto, voila, you have some extra clicks for not much more effort! They often have headlines like ‘Who is x’ and ‘Everything we know about x’, and usually the answer is ‘she’s irrelevant’ and ‘A sweet fuck all!
Due to the lingering respectability of news brands, they, and all their other output, possess a specific authority. No one tell Mariana Spring, but this power is what drives misinformation and disinformation in part. See, people were like, ‘WHY ARE THEY WRITING ARTICLES ON ROSE CHOLMONDELEY (pronounced Chumley)’ without (rightly) knowing it was for that sweet, sweet traffic! There is no secret information! It’s just idiots with a keyboard and an understanding of Google Analytics.
No one has this information! They were being written because you freaks kept Googling her! Free-to-read news is almost entirely driven by audience demand, which is acceptable to a certain extent but a can of worms for another day.
If you catch me working in digital news ever again, shake me by my shoulders and remind me that it's not worth it!! I’ve done my time, and I hate every single second!
I feel almost guilty writing this like I’m doing something wrong, but it’s actually god-awful! I have but one life to live and could do literally anything else! I try to dull my pity party with the knowledge that all my favourite media projects are a bit more, well, grassroots like the excellent podcast Cursed Objects by the excellent Dr Kasia T and Dan Hancox and my lifeblood TrueAnon.
Well, anyway, BRB, must dash, need to find a stream of revenue (or a fully-funded Ph.D. place on something relevant to my vast interests)