My tuppence on ‘the press’
Firstly there is no such entity as ‘the media’ or ‘the press’ in the sense it’s one unified body which works as one. It’s dozens of publications and broadcast stations - with tens of thousands of different editors and journalists working with their own individual biases, pet peeves, political leanings and hobby subjects.
The UK press hasn’t been controllable by the government or establishment bodies like RF for decades - there was a time when all the owners of publications and media companies were all part of the same social class and networks and happy to perform many a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ to keep things quiet for each other. That hasn’t been the case for a long time.
The only time that happens now is in extreme cases where a situation is very delicate for a short period of time - a national security issue, or giving time for police to contact relatives about a death, or covert police action. These things are usually given an embargoed deadline.
Secondly - there’s always a tabloid news cycle with royals and sometimes celebrities and politicians, but mostly royal women, of excessive praise, followed by sneaky insider gossip ‘scoops’ heading towards lots of criticism, followed by a new cycle of praise, followed by lots of criticism, followed by praise.
It’s just a way to keep the pages full of ‘new’ angles which is really a way to use lots of photos which drive sales.
They only really escape that type of coverage when either they rise to national treasure status - late Queen, David Attenborough, Judy Dench etc - or fall to national villain status - Prince Andrew.
Harry and Meghan would have been alternately praised as much as they were criticized if they’d stuck it out. There would probably have been a lot of alternate cycles with William and Kate - so one is up while the other is down and vice versa.
Unfortunately they’ve tried to control the negative side of the coverage too much which means they are now straying into the permanent villain category.