Royal Rota outdated?

[ThatAvidViewer]

Since the last time you actually saw William and Catherine, there have been no photos, no videos, no genuine sightings, and no credible stories—except for one instance.

This Summer’s Three “Wales Family” Stories

The Fort Belvedere Move Rumor

A claim that they might be moving to Fort Belvedere. They repeat a story like this every year—mostly in summer—to plug the seasonal news gap.

George and Eton

Endless guessing about whether Prince George will go to Eton. These rumors have been circulating since 2023, with reporters flip-flopping between Eton and Marlborough because they have no idea. Statistically, they have a 50% chance of being right—pure filler, this time using one of their children to stir public outrage.

"Vacation" in Greece

A supposed controversy about them vacationing in Greece, based on claims they were on a different boat. They even sent a reporter to Greece who went to those islands and couldn’t find a single worker or local who had seen them—except for one woman who swears she saw them from 30 feet away while swimming. Four separate stories were written about it, dragging the children into it in an attempt to spark outrage—which failed. Curiously, there was no outrage—or even a single article in the Daily Mail—about Camilla being on a boat in Greece.

Since January 2024—When Catherine’s Health Issues Became Public
It has become clear that the media has no real sources inside the Wales camp. Nobody knew what was going on. Not one of their supposed “insiders” had any information. Kensington Palace is now like a fortress.

Their fallback? Writing about other members of the royal family who generate more drama—because William and Catherine don’t. And it’s starting to feel like the public is getting bored of it.

The Problem for Reporters

The Wales family doesn’t generate drama. No drama means no clicks. When the public stops clicking on stories about non-working royals—something that’s already starting—these reporters will have a real problem.

A few gossip websites still make up the most salacious rumors about the Wales family, but even that isn’t working anymore—except for those 15 commenters who are living in an echo chamber and believe anything that nutter says, or want to believe it anyway. People are smarter than those sites think, and they’re not buying the false narratives.

Now the media resorts to using body language readers and lip readers to create stories, or they simply recycle old headlines. Or use so called royal experts for example Jennie Bond, Tom Quinn, Angela Levin, and a couple who don’t even live in the UK to create false stories.

Why the Royal Rota Is Outdated

The Royal Rota feels like a relic in the age of social media. The royal family could release their news directly on their own channels, without relying on intermediaries.
When rota reporters attend engagements, they often focus on throwaway comments William and Catherine—or other royals—make. The actual work of the charity or event they’re covering is usually given just a couple of sentences at the end.

So, in my opinion, they should do away with the Royal Rota. Use their own social media and maybe work with local media to report on their engagements.

The Royal Rota’s primary function is to make the press pool manageable and limit the numbers who attend events.

It can mean limiting to one reporter, one camera person and one photographer for some events - like the Queen’s last engagement with Liz Truss - all material is then pooled to the rest of the rota who were not allowed in.

It also expands to local news organizations for smaller events happening out in the regions.

Its purpose is to monitor and vet the press pack who will turn up for most big Royal events no matter what.

I think the royal rota are very annoyed with William. They want Harry back and it to be like an episode of Dynasty back in the day with Meghan and Kate as Alexis and Krystal. To be fair that would be v entertaining.

I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding about what the Royal rota is versus media organizations royal correspondents.

This is something else that started with Meghan and Harry and how in their exit manifesto they claimed their bold new path would be to stop using the rota and liaise with ground roots journalists.

The royal family can and does choose liaise with smaller publications for specific events or enagagments. For example William choosing The Big Issue for an interview about homelessness.

There was nothing to stop H&M doing something similar.

The Royal rota protects the public and the royals at popular engagements by limiting the press pack numbers so that it doesn’t become a media scrum. And it gives the security teams a chance to vet any media personnel who might end up in close quarters with members of the royal family.

Local journalists get temporary rota passes for events on their patch. (I know this because I had some)

Factual as always @wordler, although I did find most of what @ThatAvidViewerwrote interesting and fairly spot on in places!
op if you rewrote everything you just did but replace the royal rota with simply reporters or journalists then I think you are quite right.

I should have said royal reporters rather than just “the Royal Rota.”

But the fact remains—those reporters are part of the rota system. I understand they are there for a reason, but it isn’t working.

Too often, they either repeat what PR people feed them—Victoria Ward and Chris Ship are prime examples of simply echoing PR lines—or they make stories out of nothing. And as I said before, they frequently fail to even write about the charity they’re covering.

Instead, the article becomes all about some throwaway comment William or Catherine makes about their private life. If that doesn’t happen, it’s a full piece about what they’re wearing.

I’ve read far better coverage on so-called “fan sites” than from professional royal reporters. Those fan site articles were often 80% focused on the charity’s work, and only 20%—at the very end—on what was said and what was worn.

The problem is it's working for the reporters and the news organisations - they get huge amount of clicks/sales for very little extra work especially as they can constantly recycle the same stories over and over again.

Add into that all the people trying to flog books about the royal family, and then every publications reporting on the extracts from the books etc.

And now there's also the option of writing a whole article just based on what some random people on Twitter are saying about the royal family.

A lot of that is very lazy reporting but it's profitable so won't end.

The royal family could release their news directly on their own channels, without relying on intermediaries.

What is interesting is that to a certain extent the PPoW are doing that. The Princess of Wales launched a new initiative with the Centre for Early Childhood about a week ago - a series of animated films to help parents and other adults interact with infants and young children.

It was announced on their Instagram page and then picked up by a few of the papers, with images credited to Kensington Palace.

It seems like the actual news is being very well controlled. It just isn't as exciting as the gossipy stuff.

The advantage of releasing news through conventional news media, which the Royal Rota is, is that it isn’t censored or skewed by algorithms. Everybody gets the same news, or version of it.

Also a reporter can ask a spontaneous question and hope to get a spontaneous answer. That doesn’t happen when the RF controls the release of information.

I can see why Instagram and other forms of social media seem attractive but you then get a highly curated output. This is what Harry and Meghan Markle are after, and a perfect example if one were needed of why it shouldn’t be the only way we get information about our RF.

One of the benefits of Megxit was that we were spared years of articles pitting the two women against each other. Judging by the covers of some magazines, some writers are still trying but they have barely anything to work with. I think a lot of them just make stuff up.

IMHO, the key issue with the Royal Rota in this era is there is no penalty for sharing false information and repeating provably untrue narratives. Like all media and as other posters have noted, the Royal Rota chase clicks and accuracy is an afterthought.

For example, Richard Palmer, a rota reporter misquoted Prince William and when faced with the live footage Palmer offered a rather weak apology tweeting "He doesn't appear to have compared it to conflicts in Africa and Asia. In the chaos, a remark he made was misheard, starting a social media storm. Apologies for reporting that online." However live footage of the event showed zero chaos and that W's remarks could be heard on the live footage.

Even beyond the rota there are self-appointed royal reporters like the Daily Beast's Tom Sykes who was absolutely slated online for his headline claiming that Princess Beatrice's new daughter was KC3's granddaughter. It takes two seconds to check, but that two seconds could mean a competitor to Daily Beast could click post and be first to report the story. Accuracy clearly took a back seat to speed.

Not sure how this problem can be overcome as the AI reporters who are taking over from humans come pre-programmed with bias since, for example, a Times AI reporter would be trained on data from Times news articles.

They are also biased. Favorable stories about certain royals often depend on where a reporter’s sources lie or who their employer is.
For example:

• Rebecca English (Daily Mail) – Pro-Buckingham Palace.
• Charlotte Griffiths (Daily Mail) – Pro-Sussex.
• Chris Ship (ITV) – Pro-Sussex and often negative about the wider royal family.
• Victoria Ward (Telegraph) – Pro-Sussex; essentially a stenographer for Sussex PR.
• Rhiannon Mills (Sky) – Pro-Buckingham Palace.
• Cameron Walker (GB News) – Stenographer; doesn’t really have original stories and mostly repeats press releases.
• Russel Meyers (Mirror) – In my opinion, the only one reasonable about all sides.

They have been in their jobs so long that they have to stay favorable to where their sources are.
William and Catherine are considered “boring” because they don’t provide drama or leaks. These reporters are not looking to the future—for example, in the event of the King’s death, hopefully far in the future. If that happens, their sources in Buckingham Palace will be gone.
Meanwhile, with the Wales children growing up and increasingly in the public eye, focus will naturally shift to them. Reporters have no access to the Wales family—which has become very clear over the past year and a half. This creates a potential problem for royal reporters in the future.
That’s why I suggest using local reporters and you’re more likely to get objective reporting.

I forgot Times reporters:
Roya Nikkah – Mostly pro-Sussex; still has a profile photo with Prince Harry.
Kate Mansey – Also generally pro-Sussex.

The trouble with journalists in general who report on the monarchy, and specifically those in the rota, is that they are meant to speak truth to power, but such is the wealth and influence of the royal family whose privilege and status affords them huge protection, they are hindered in doing so to a very great extent.

So rather than reporting objectively, there is a certain amount of collusion going on to be trusted with a story in the first place. Hence the “pack” of chosen ones tend to be quite favourable towards the monarchy as a start point.

That’s not to say that every unpleasant story gets suppressed but on many occasions it is manipulated and spun, or diluted. The current situation with Prince Andrew is a case in point. We knew a lot about his unpleasant antics, but only really thanks to the Epstein case did we get to know the really gruesome facts, and the Royal Family has covered up the extent of his corruption in his trade envoy job, and the fact that a nanny allegedly left his employ because he was a sex pest.

Even now, I don’t see many stories in the chosen papers represented by the royal rota titled “how much did the Palace know?” . Which is shocking really, given that the late Queen paid out a £12 million pound settlement.

So although I can understand the practical advantages of having a story go to one or two chosen reporters who then disseminate it to others, there is no advantage to the system if the original story is of poor quality, I think the RF benefit in the main from having the same “curated” stories fed to everyone else!

The rota makes sense from the point of view of Royal visits. A visit to a hospice for example should not be accompanied by a massive press pack, neither should the children in their first day of school have to face a bank of photographers. The system makes things easier for everyone involved.

The rota isn't there to break stories about the Royal family, they are there to report on visits in a manageable way. They fulfil that purpose well.

If journalists want stories that are probing and ground breaking then they need to do the work to get those stories. Following Princess Anne around isn't how you break a story, but it is easier.

I highly recommend listening to the Times Royals podcast with Roya Nikkah and Kate Mansey. They have a very healthy balanced approach to the royals and are very knowledgeable. It’s not a royal gossip podcast, they cover some really interesting topics.

Yes I take some of those good points on board MrsLeonFarrell.

The hospice example makes good sense.

The royal rota are fed stories. Their purpose is not really to question too much.

The fundamental issue imho is that objective investigative reporters don’t get the same access. AL had difficulty accessing hidden documents for example.

In the light of the Lownie book, is anyone asking “why have journalists not done their job and uncovered all of this earlier?” Naive to expect to see that as a headline 😃 but why is no one querying it in the media?

We the public have been badly let down.
PA was allegedly using public money to go on jaunts. The public should have been informed about the extent of the problem.

Thanks for this recommendation JSMill
I will have a listen!

Andrew Lownie had difficulty accessing documents but I don't see evidence that it was the Royal household that was blocking him, it was the government who had blocked the relevant information from release for 75 (?) years. I absolutely think that Andrew's trade envoy position should have been scrutinised and removed far earlier but we live in a parliamentary democracy, not an absolute monarchy, and the people responsible for letting him continue are civil servants and politicians not the Royal household.

I do believe that with the length of the late Queen's resign some old fashioned deference was in play but just because politicians chose to behave as if they are in the 1950s doesn't mean they were correct to do so. Someone should have grown a backbone far earlier.

In other words I'm pretty sure politicians and civil servants were covering their own backs, but it's handy to blame some shadowy Royal force for the difficulty instead of looking at who was really responsible.

When the late Queen wrote to RAVEC requesting that Harry retain security her letter made it clear that she knew she could request but not demand. With that in mind I agree there were institutional failures in handling Andrew, but they weren't just Royal, they were also political.

I listen but I find Roya extremely biased in favour of Harry and Meghan and very quick to offer excuses for their behaviour. I think Kate is far more even handed.

Too late to edit but I just wanted to add to MrsLeonFarrell that I very much agree that the royal children should be protected too,

I have been trying to find out who selects the royal rota and the following article popped up.

https://newsmediauk.org/industry-services/royal-rota/

Can anyone clarify this paragraph please?

The NMA allocates rota passes for local, regional and national newspapers in its membership. Fixed point passes, or any other method of accessing events, are allocated by the host or relevant royal household

I am trying to find out more about NMA passes v fixed point passes. Is it the Palace who mainly selects the rota for high profile visits or the NMA? How does it work?

Those are very fair and pertinent clarifications MrsLeonFarrell which I take on board.

In particular the procedural implications for government and parliament which seemed to turn a blind eye to PA’s antics. As you say, however well meaning to the late Queen EII, it doesn’t sit well.

No it doesn't. I doubt we will see the same going forward. It is one of the consequences of a long resign, that some things keep going when society has moved on.

I think you are confusing two different things.

The Royal rota is simply a system of organizing the press pack so depending on the engagement the numbers of reporters / photographers etc can be managed. Passes are given to news organizations not individuals. News organizations then choose which individuals to give their rota passes to.

So for example - the Daily Express might get two rota slots - they use them for their Royal beat reporter (currently Rebecca English) plus a photographer.

National BBC might get four - they split that depending on the event between the current Royal correspondent - like Nick Witchell or Jenni Bond etc, plus a cameraman, a producer and a multimedia online producer.

Local BBC will get one or two depending on the event.

All these people are ‘rota’ - their job is to repot on an event they have been invited to.

Then you have Royal correspondents - these are journalists who cover the Royal ‘beat’ similar to those on the crime beat or the environment beat etc - it’s their specialist subject and they are expected to both cover engagements as they come up and also generate articles to cover days when not much is happening - how much and what tone is led by their editors and those running their news organizations.

Also pic of my last rota pass - was a long time ago.

That may be how the RF would see it, but viewed from Parliament, there’s a huge risk if they are not seen not to be applying normal review procedures for the activities of individuals who are carrying out government or state functions, In other words, PA is covered by RF immunity and protocols but this should not apply to his activities on behalf of the state.

In other words, the protection afforded to the RF, should only apply in a strict and limited fashion.

If a Prince is employed as a trade envoy by the state, then government rules on negligence, fraud, corruption should apply to them as much as the next person. Instead of which PA was allowed to stick two fingers up in the air to them because he was “royal”.

Seriously — Roya Nikkah is so firmly aligned with H&M that it’s hard to miss. She even still has a profile photo of herself with Harry on her social media. Kate Mansey isn’t much better. And honestly, much of what they put out is just gossip dressed up as reporting.