I follow Peter Hunt on Twitter (you can see his handle here). He’s a former BBC presenter and sort of a self-styled royal critic. He’s a royalist, don’t get me wrong, but he also criticizes the way the Windsors do business. For years, he’s made some good points about the Sussexit and how horrible the Windsors were to Prince Harry in particular. One of Hunt’s special interests is how the British media is far too obsequious to the Windsors, how access-journalism has ruined everything, and how the media should do their jobs and act as a check on the monarchy’s power. Well, guess who has many thoughts about the Mother’s Day Frankenphoto Fiasco? Hunt was appalled that after years of bowing, scraping and supplicating to the Windsors, the British media didn’t have the balls to question the photo and it took the international media calling out the palace clownshow for anyone to mildly criticize this horrible system. Hunt shared even more thoughts:
The media should use the Kensington Palace photo editing row as an “opportunity” to insist it has full editorial control over royal footage, a former BBC royal correspondent has said. Peter Hunt, now a royal commentator, said parts of the media had “a bar that was perhaps too low” when it came to examining material handed out by the palace.
Earlier this week, Phil Chetwynd of AFP said the palace was no longer a “trusted source”, adding that the photographs more usually subject to a “kill notice” were issued by North Korean or Iranian news agencies. Mr Hunt, speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme, said broadcasters including the BBC should follow suit in insisting filmed material is not controlled by the palace, proving to viewers that it can be trusted.
Mr Hunt said: “It’s a new world for the royals and a new world for the media. That senior person from AFP mentioned the British monarchy in the same breath as the so-called axis of evil, which isn’t a good look when he says that they previously killed pictures only from the North Korean and Iranian news agency. It shows that they and maybe others had a bar which was perhaps too low when it came to photos from this sort of source.”
Mr Hunt said he had raised concerns in 2016 about footage of the Royal family and projects including the Heads Together mental health campaign being filmed by others and handed out.
“The BBC has made considerable focus on this issue of transparency,” he said. “The BBC constantly talks about transparency being an essential element in ensuring audiences feel they can trust BBC journalism.” He suggested the corporation could make use of the existing “royal cameraman” paid for by the BBC, ITV and Sky. “This would be an opportunity for the BBC to make clear to its audiences that the material that individual provides is material that they control. That it’s not edited by the palace, not controlled by the palace. They can make clear that the sound that’s picked up by the cameraman is not interfered with in any way as well. It’s an opportunity for broadcasters to follow suit.”
I appreciate that Hunt is bringing this up, if for no other reason than the issue puts a spotlight on the fact that no British media outlet has followed the lead set by Reuters, AFP, AP and Getty. The Sun, The Times, the Mail, the Telegraph, the Mirror, the BBC – none of them have pledged to examine and verify the authenticity of photos and videos provided by the Windsors. You know why that is too, it’s not that the Telegraph or the Mail has some kind of implicit trust in everything they’re handed from the palace. It’s that every British outlet (save for the Guardian, arguably) sees itself less as a member of the Fourth Estate and more as a helpful propaganda arm of the British monarchy and Tory Party. Why examine a palace-issued photo when you can use it in your royalist propaganda?
Photos courtesy of Kensington Palace.
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- Members of the Royal Family including HRH The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall with The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, and Prince Harry attend a Memorial service held at the Thiepval Somme Memorial to mark the 100th Anniversary of the Battle of the Somme which started on the 1st July 1916. Prince William, Kate and Prince Harry were met on arrival at the visitor centre by President Hollande of France.,Image: 532096304, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: UK and USA ONLY – Fee Payable Upon Reproduction – For queries contact Photoshot – sales@photoshot.com London: +44 (0) 20 7421 6000 Los Angeles: +1 (310) 822 0419 Berlin: +49 (0) 30 76 212 251, Model Release: no, Credit line: Eric Beracassat / VISUAL Press Agency / Avalon
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- Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani (Republican of New York, New York) conducts a press conference at Republican National Committee headquarters in Washington, DC on Thursday, November 19, 2020. He is accompanied by Trump Campaign Senior Legal Advisor Jenna Ellis. Giuliani wiped at his brow as the sweat poured down from his forehead. Pictured: Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani BACKGRID USA 19 NOVEMBER 2020 BYLINE MUST READ: MediaPunch / BACKGRID USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani (Republican of New York, New York) conducts a press conference at Republican National Committee headquarters in Washington, DC on Thursday, November 19, 2020. He is accompanied by Trump Campaign Senior Legal Advisor Jenna Ellis. Giuliani wiped at his brow as the sweat poured down from his forehead. Pictured: Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani BACKGRID USA 19 NOVEMBER 2020 BYLINE MUST READ: MediaPunch / BACKGRID USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- Queen Elizabeth, accompanied by members of the Royal Family, attends the Christmas Day service at St. Mary Magdalene Church at Sandringham Featuring: Meghan Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle Where: Sandringham, United Kingdom When: 25 Dec 2018 Credit: John Rainford/WENN
Yeah, that’s not going to happen for the reasons stated. The British media considers itself a propaganda arm of the monarchy, not journalism. So, there is nothing to check these royals. And as Lord Acton reminded us, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
It really underscores the point that the British monarchy most closely resembles N. Korea. and Iran.
So I’m guessing that ITV’s fly on the wall style documentary of Will has been quietly cancelled. Shame, because it would have been hilarious to see them trying to make Will look relevant!
Oh yeah! I forgot all about this! Wasn’t there supposed to be a big documentary this year?
It was announced earlier last year and the tabloids gloated that it would be such a huge success, it would smash Harry and Meghan’s Netflix documentary. Lol. It was supposed to offer the most candid view into his life. YIKES!!! With Kate gone missing and with all this secrecy, that would have been interesting.
Hunt is definitely worth a follow. Reading and watching a British royal journalist act and sound sane in interviews is quite refreshing.
That’s ok – there are zillions on social media who are willing to “exert control.”
“It’s that every British outlet (save for the Guardian, arguably) sees itself less as a member of the Fourth Estate and more as a helpful propaganda arm of the British monarchy and Tory Party. Why examine a palace-issued photo when you can use it in your royalist propaganda?” I think it also shows that the post-Betty monarchy is really weak; at least then they had her popularity to fall back. It’s a real paper tiger that cannot withstand the mildest of scrutiny.
Peter Hunt is a voice of reason. An alternative to letting the media take the photos is to have an official photographer like the White House. Kate shouldn’t be taking the photos.
Hunt is a great follow. He’s definitely a royalist like Kaiser said, but he’s also just….sane and objective. He doesn’t act like H&M committed some unforgiveable crime by leaving, he doesn’t buy the palace narratives without fact checking, etc. He’s what a royal journalist/commentator SHOULD be, IMO.
and yes, it is interesting that the US media and the press associations are talking about the royal palace in a way that the british press isn’t – because the british press doesn’t care if they are just pushing the palace’s propaganda, they are on board with that.
And honestly once you just call it “propaganda” all those weird-ass pictures make more sense.
Agree. I’ve been following him for some time and I pay attention to whatever he is saying.
Hunt may have become one of the “saner” voices over the years, but he was one of M’s harshest critics back in the day. He always had snide and snarky things to say about her, even when he toned down his criticisms of H. It was as though he had swallowed the palace narratives about her hook, line and sinker. Then something changed – I always wondered whether one of his more perceptive acquaintances gave him a slap about the head, introduced him to terms like stochastic terrorism, and pointed out the obvious double standards in the treatment of the two duchesses based on good old fashioned racism.
Has Hunt ever come out and apologized for his earlier racist coverage of Meghan? Because without that, I’m not finding him trustworthy as a source. It just sounds like he got better at hiding his overt racism.
He has definitely gotten better about his coverage/comments about Meghan, for whatever reason – maybe the british press just got so nasty that he finally saw it for what it was, or someone IRL told him to change his tone, I dont know. I give people room to grow and change.
It’s not about him being “trustworthy as a source” because he rarely has any breaking news – he’s not an active journalist now I dont think, he’s not part of the rota, he just writes think pieces and provides commentary. More like Dickie Arbiter but without……..well, being Dickie Arbiter, haha.
Maybe he read Spare, which showed Harry not to be the perpetually adolescent ditz that everyone conveniently portrayed for their own selfish narratives.
I appreciate Hunts current commentary and it is significant coming from an old school wasp royalist. But you are right, he does still miss the point about racism M faced.
I think he was always critical of cowmilla. Maybe he saw her hand in Sussexit and realized he’d been played by the brf.
Maybe he watched the Oprah interview and started questioning his previous assumptions. He knows the palace and the media, and would know the things Meghan was saying were probably true.
Similarly, about the British media, from @HenrytheVIII on X-twitter: “Hard to argue you aren’t kneeling sycophants when apparently the royal family has been releasing poor digitally created photos for years and no one in the press called them on it.”
Peter Hunt’s effort to improve the BM’s relationship with the monarchy, though laudable, is futile, in my opinion. To quote Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
And no one called them on it for years until… supposedly wacko “conspiracy theorists” like us drew international attention to what was going on, which swiftly led to the unmasking of the Frankenphoto. Not bad results for keyboard warriors.
Not so sure about the Guardian. Lately they’ve been pretty obsequious towards Kate and William. Their columnists defend the royals by deflection or they make fun of Americans as people consumed by conspiracy theories and violence.
Regular (royal) columnists like posh Marina Hyde and Zoe Williams have time and time again painted Harry and Meghan as hypocrites when it comes to claiming privacy, as disloyal, or petulant wannabe celebrities and often lump them with Andrew as the family blacksheep. I find these columnists enjoy using their Oxbridge trained snarkiness to remind Americans how uncouth and unsophisticated we are. You get the sense these days, things in the UK aren’t going so well, less hope and glory and more Boris and Rishi, so they take solace in lording their old world charm and sophistication over us with great pomposity. In that sense, it’s true. Rule, Britannia! can do it like no other country.
The latest example here:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/mar/20/us-kate-middleton-conspiracy-theory
But you know things are tough all over. The US too is facing a self-identity crisis where our democracy is threatened by internal strife. The big difference is we don’t pretend we don’t have problems. We acknowledge the violence, the racism, the inequality, the rising theocracy and authoritarianism which are shredding the fabric of American society. Little England by using its royals as proxy of the country’s greatness likes to pretend it’s very much not a racist nation. It’s a genteel place, bucolic with lots of sheep. Whatever happens, through thick and thin, by golly, there will always be the British Royal Family.
So there you have it. FK Willy and FQ Cathy. Photoshopped and ready to rule.
The point is on Guardian you can read opinion piece mocking H&M, but also K&W. They had an article about how Kate is acting like Barbie, wearing different uniforms each day without any substance, another article about Will and his lack of manners as a public official. Other “newspapers” don’t have this diversity of different opinions.
It’s true the Guardian offers diversity of views compared to other UK news outlets. Sure they poke fun at Kate and take an occasional swipe at Charles’ little foibles, but they save the big guns for H&M and Andrew. The Guardian counterpoints much of the right wing UK press. The reporters did a big expose on the royal finances. But the regular columnists are royalists even though they tried to pretend they find the whole thing a bit beneath them.
The Guardian has published quite a few articles about how lack of diversity in the+newsroom affects news reporting and press independence. But like many newsrooms, it too struggles with achieving diversity of people, not just thoughts. One criticism lobbed at the Guardian is its management and regular featured writers tend to be from the same Oxbridge, elite club, predominantly white, and despite their more liberal take, it doesn’t have many columnists/editors from the working class.
“One criticism lobbed at the Guardian is its management and regular featured writers tend to be from the same Oxbridge, elite club, predominantly white, and despite their more liberal take, it doesn’t have many columnists/editors from the working class.”
@Catnip, that is certainly the main point. The pool of journalists in UK is filled with the same people graduated from the same schools with the same friend circles. It is hard for working class people to enter the sector and make a living. So, there is certainly a lot of negative opinion pieces on H&M, but I also read a lot of honest, critical pieces about the current BRF and what happened to H&M. In this case, I don’t mind the negative articles, I don’t need to see always positive pieces about them. The diversity of the opinion is the most important part in journalism. Otherwise, it just sounds like propaganda.
Excellent assessment of Guardian columnists; this is why I stopped reading them, although I still read the rest of it every day, particularly exposés like the Panama Papers. They just can’t help themselves with the anti Americanism, it’s really annoying
But they keep promising that WanK will conquer America with their charm offensive.
Which is it?
Americans are uncouth and violent?
OR
Those [stupid] Americans just LOVE Pegs and KKKhate?
You cannot have it both ways! You can’t continue to insult us AND somehow believe we’re falling over ourselves to prop up the British monarchy.
Peter Hunt making sense. The fact that the RF has final edit on videos and can have moments removed makes it clear that the bbc is not serious.
I find this sort of advice as unhelpful as Harry and Meghan focusing on the media as their big adversary. Sure, the media shouldn’t run photos from dubious sources; but the whole reason they ran the frankenphoto, the whole reason the media was relentlessly hounding Meghan was because they were being fed directly by the palace. The palace is the problem. Truth never entered the equation, it’s not like they were desperate for the truth to get out there and so released a photo without fully vetting its sources, it was an agenda from jump enacted happily by the same media entities that Peter Hunt is now saying “just need better standards.”
It’s absolutely a problem, and media needs to do better, but continuing to treat the British tabloid media as if they’re journalists with any sort of standard and not just palace propaganda is a level of naivety that gets us nowhere. The British media isn’t going to tell the palace that they won’t run their images, that’s the entire reason why they exist. Reputable news sources like Reuters and journalists like Hunt need to shun the British media, ignore them, isolate them, cut them off completely and see how quickly the narrative shifts.
Can Peter Hunt afford that much courage? He lives there. Has bills to pay. British news outlets are owned by billionaires and hedge funds with global reach. Look at the Murdochs’ empire and the harm it inflicted on democracies and societies around the world.
These obscenely rich geezers bought the country and the press. You can say they own the politicians as well because in the UK, there’s a coziness among the royals, government administrators, politicians, and UK press. It’s a special club and power stays within the elites. BRF sits at the table with them. It’s not a table where free press or the common person has a place.
I don’t think anyone would mind Kate taking photos of her children for birthdays, etc. There is no news value there and it is better for the children not being subject to a professional photo shoot so frequently. The problem is, when you take a photo of QE2 with her (great-)/grandchildren, that would be the last photo of her with her family, it carries a historical value. Now, we know it is also manipulated for whatever reason. Things like that, I think, should be documented by a professional, not an amateur photographer.
Will someone please remind me the context of that ballgown/piano photo?
I think that was part of her previously filmed bit for Eurovision, inserted at the beginning (I think) of the Ukrainian entry.
That’s the shameless self-promotion of KKkate at the beginning of the TV broadcast of the Eurovision song contest finale, which had nothing to do with her. UK host that year instead of Ukraine because Ukraine was at war, if I remembered correctly.
If they prove the piano can move its own keys, she’s done for. Oh, dear, the former cultural force of the BRF. At least she has the chutney. Unless it’s Waitrose No1.
Whoa. That’s some crazy levels of airbrushing on Kate and Will’s photos!
This is what I love about a lot of the foreign media (, foreign to the UK that is) they refuse to let the Royals have access to photos or articles before they are printed.
It’s time the media in this toxic country said, NO, not happening, no peviews, no handed to us pictures and we are not knee bending anymore. You have your Royal press offices, but we are going to be properly impartial now and print the un varnished truth.
Yeah I believe pigs will fly first
How has this Kate and William photo not been more widly ridiculed when it came out ? It wouldn’t have been more stupid looking if they had put a full head of hair on William.
Yikes the visibility of Wiglet’s chest bones in that sunflower picture…
that last picture lol