What’s fuelling the media’s enduring hate campaign against Meghan Markle?

Written by Sibo Chen, Toronto Metropolitan University. Originally published in The Conversation.

Earlier this year, the Daily Beast published a story that contained highly derogatory allegations about the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle, quoting anonymous sources.

The piece was apparently aimed at refuting an earlier story in US Weekly that praised Markle and her management style, and featured people quoted by name.

The Daily Beast piece, written by a British-born journalist, was another example in a well-established pattern of relentless negative media framing of Markle — particularly by the same U.K. tabloids that have been sued by her husband, Prince Harry — and often via the use of unnamed sources.

This framing is readily identifiable by conducting a simple Google News search on her name. Markle, in fact, recently described herself as being one of the most bullied people in the world — which was met with more online bullying.

Although tabloid gossip is a feature of any celebrity’s life, the longstanding and seemingly orchestrated media campaign against Markle, a private citizen who left the United Kingdom almost five years ago and hasn’t spoken publicly about the Royal Family in years, is exceptional.

There have even been allegations of British media outlets attempting to pay people to lie about her.

These efforts reveal important information about the intersection of media power, gender and race.

As a communications scholar, I wanted to examine how Markle has been represented in the media and what other academics have determined in their own research about the coverage of her. The goal is not to assess the media’s derogatory claims about her; rather, it’s to shed light on the concealed structural issues underlying everyday news.

A disruptor in Brexit-era Britain

Since the onset of her relationship with Prince Harry, Markle’s identity as a feminist, biracial, American media celebrity has been under heavy media scrutiny. Early on in their relationship, The Daily Mail ran a highly controversial piece with the headline: “Harry’s girl is (almost) straight outta Compton: Gang-scarred home of her mother revealed — so will he be dropping by for tea?”

This piece made no attempt to conceal its racism and was replete with negative stereotypes of Black urban poverty, depicting Markle as unfit for the privileged life of the monarchy.

Nonetheless, the couple’s wedding received generally favourable media coverage from a diverse array of outlets. This disparity prompted scholars to inquire into the symbolic meanings of the royal wedding.

In an essay that garnered significant media attention, historian Hannah Yelin and sociologist Laura Clancy argued that the monarchy co-opted Markle’s feminist rhetoric.

They wrote:

“A celebrity (post)feminist such as Markle is of great value to a British monarchy keen to set themselves apart from these other forms of patriarchy and to mask, or at least deflect attention from, their own intensely problematic relationship with issues of race, gender, class and religion.”

But when The Sunday Times published a story based upon Yelin and Clancy’s essay, it chose an eye-catching yet problematically inaccurate title: “Academics accuse Meghan Markle of dropping feminism like a hot potato.”

As this story was reproduced by other publications, Yelin and Clancy found themselves targeted with sustained online hostility. Their criticism of proliferating misogyny was co-opted into increasingly negative media coverage of Markle. This twist was a telling revelation of how attacks on Markle are closely associated with mounting public tension around feminism and visible feminists.

Racial identity

Besides the gender perspective, racial identity is also central to media discourses surrounding Markle, whose marriage to Prince Harry was depicted by some media commentators as a marked progress in British race relations.

This widely held opinion, however, is disputed by many scholars. For example, Kehinde Andrews, the first Black Studies professor in the U.K. who led the establishment of the first Black Studies program in Europe at Birmingham City University, considers Markle’s inclusion into the royal family a “cosmetic change in representation.”

He adds that framing her entry into the family as a sign of progress is “the perfect example of a post-racial delusion that demonstrates how poorly the nation understands racism and the power of the desire to live in a fantasy of progress rather than address continuing issues.”

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s high-profile departure from the Royal Family in 2020 occurred in the broader context of Brexit, and it was naturally labelled as #Megxit in online discussions.

This play on words allowed racist ideologies to persist under the guise of humour. As media scholar Kendra Marston noted:

“Staged fantasies of Markle’s expulsion from the Royal Family and indeed from Britain — neatly encapsulated in the Twitter hashtag #Megxit — seek to preserve a fantasy of the British monarchy as an exclusive symbol of national heritage that is conservative, patriarchal, white and, importantly, legitimate.”

Market-oriented journalism

Media narratives about Markle should also be understood against the backdrop of British regulatory environments and market mechanisms.

First, journalists in the U.K. navigate a maze of statutes and legal precedents. As such, their focus can be drawn to what is legally possible, and there is more legal leeway for reporting on celebrities and members of the Royal Family than there is for reporting on private people.

Ethical considerations appear in professional codes of conduct. McNae’s Essential Law for Journalists, a tome elaborating what may get journalists into legal trouble, is the British journalist’s “Bible.”

Second — and unlike the U.K.’s statutorily regulated broadcast sector — oversight of the print sector primarily rests with the industry-established Independent Press Standards Organisation. The extent to which this self-regulatory arrangement curbs newspaper excesses is a matter of debate.

Market pressures weigh on British media ethics, but there is a difference in coverage between the more sober “quality” press like The Guardian and sensationalistic tabloids like The Daily Mail and The Sun, which lean towards hyper-competitive, market-oriented journalism.

Media scholar James Curran has noted that quality news historically attracts high-end advertisers seeking high-end “niche” audiences; tabloids have sought larger, mass audiences and the advertisers targeting them. Sensationalism and outrage deliver large readerships, as does gossip, which helps audiences feel “in the know” about exclusive, high-status groups.

Gossip does appear in the quality press, though tabloids excel at providing it.

In 2012, the U.K.’s Leveson inquiry into media ethics resulted in a series of recommendations on how to regulate British newspapers in the wake of phone-hacking scandals. Those recommendations have largely been ignored.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said recently he would not revive the long-awaited second part of the inquiry, to the dismay of media regulation advocates and many parliamentarians.

Societal tensions

The media’s portrayal of Markle reveals the societal tensions underlying daily news, particularly concerning race and gender.

It also underscores the complexity of news ethics, especially in the U.K., which are exacerbated by the supposed self-regulation of some media outlets. Market pressures and the desire for clicks often result in sensationalist celebrity coverage that can often be factually problematic or, in Markle’s case, even incendiary at times.

Given the media’s impact on public perception and how it can incite online abuse of the type Markle is frequently subjected to, it seems the media should rethink how it reports on public figures and private citizens alike.