How come William chose to ignore the massive elephant in the room and no one challenged him on it?

[Roadtripwithpretzels]

Prince William spoke about the very important subject of mh yesterday on Radio One and while it’s a subject that should be highlighted, does no one else think that his credibility on this issue has now been damaged by the AMW case?

He may not have been personally responsible for the alleged cover up, and he may well loathe Uncle Andrew, but he is still a central player in the institution that helped to pay off and cover up the voices of AMW’s alleged victims? Virginia Giuffre took her own life fhs! He can’t just ignore it!

To me this interview came across as incredibly unintelligent and insensitive in current circumstances. And proof that William himself just doesn’t “get it”.

Why on earth did he not say that in the light of current circumstances and out of respect for victims; the interview couldn’t go ahead?

Or why did his new ex crisis manager PR person not advise this?

And why was he allowed to sit there by the BBC and not address this?

And what about the mh of the Palace staff who have suffered because of AMW’s boorish and inappropriate behaviour for years? The nanny who allegedly left because of AMW being inappropriate and the policeman whose arm was hurt by AMW’s speeding at Windsor? The maids who were screamed at? What about the mental health of the police protection offices who quite recently were, according to Lownie, reminded about their NDAs and the safety of their pensions if they spoke out?

I don’t think it’s good enough any longer for a senior member of the RF to sit there and say yet again in a rather generic way “we all need to talk about our mental health” while ignoring what their own institution has covered up for years and is still allegedly trying to suppress?

And the BBC should hold some accountability about this too!

Just adding that’s not what the Royal rota system is

It’s a popular misconception on here that it’s something special controlled by the royals and exclusive to reporters chosen by the royals - I think Harry and Meghan are partly to blame for this because in their manifesto they claimed they were going to forge a new path and work with ground roots non RR publications.

The rota is simply an orgsnisational tool to prevent engagements being overwhelmed with too many individual members of the press at any particular event or engagement. Particularly big media organizations like the BBC - otherwise you might get 20 people from the BBC from different departments leaving no room for anyone else.

Each media entity gets a specific number of passes and they choose who they want to send. So a newspaper might get 2 - one reporter and one photographer. The BBC might get four - one TV reporter, one radio reporter, one camera operator and one producer.

When thru go to events outside London the rota is also extended to local media - you get a one off pass per day, along with briefing notes on what the event will be - someone from the palace press office advises on where to stand to capture the best pictures etc without getting in the way etc.

I had a couple of rota passes several years ago for a local radio station and believe me no one in that rota pack are personally deferential to the royals.

This report bears re-reading.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/prince-andrew-william-kate-virginia-giuffre-b2848650.html

Thanks once more @wordler! , I remember you explaining this previously ( possibly more than once?!) , it’s always good to know the facts.

Marina Hyde was saying that in her opinion, the media in general is/was so deferential to the RF that Harry and Megan were a godsend- they diverted both the public and the press’s attention away from the whole Andrew affair.

The only thing that’s weird about this story is that ABC killed the whole interview instead of editing it so that they could use the parts without risking a defamation suit on the parts they couldn’t verify.

They could definitely have aired the parts about Epstein after his death.

Have William and Catherine done interviews with abc?
are they likely to?
very odd!

Thanks @wordler - remembered you explaining and showing your pass on a previous thread

I just checked the website. The 3 impacts are quite remote- paying for staff, they are still banging on about the early childhood survey which was how many years ago, but yes, I the suicide prevention stuff is good. What I mean is if you look at The Queen, inviting sick children to Buckingham Palace, inviting Giselle Pelicot to Buckingham Palace it seems more personal than ' our foundation got other people to give our foundation loads of money which the people who work for the foundation gave to some charities' It's not as personal. They are still, imo, very PR focused. I think they do PR instead of the physical meeting people which makes a difference.

I had a couple of rota passes several years ago for a local radio station and believe me no one in that rota pack are personally deferential to the royals.
Have you read anything by Roya Nikkah? The woman is like a walking press release! I don't think the press has in any way been rigorous enough. Some notable journalists have exposed things and they have been completely ignored by the rest of the press.

Well I don’t know her personally but what ends up in print is also partly down to the senior editorial staff.

Also if you are given a ‘beat’ you are under enormous pressure to write/produce a certain volume of pieces every week - page editors who are in need of filling spaces or producers who are filling news programmes or 24 hour news often will take quantity over quality but that’s nature of the beast in today’s world.

There’s not a lot of money around to pay for the longer more thoughtful or investigative pieces anymore - now everyone’s getting their news from Twitter and TikTok

@RainbowBagels A lot of the more 'personal' stuff like meeting people is on their Instagram page. I referred you to the RF website because you talked about wanting tangible things, and that's what I've used to look things up.

For example, I looked at the yearly report, found what they had contributed in my local (deprived) area, went to the website for that particular community group, saw how they were still contributing a year later, etc.

What I find odd about news concerning the Royal family is that so much stuff is printed that comes from unnamed sources close to the family. If it's just invented by the newspapers why doesn't the RF complain? Or if it's true why can't they actually put their name to something? It's not surprising that there is so much misinformation when this seems to be an acceptable way of putting news out there.

They being what @RainbowBagels wrote:

'our foundation got other people to give our foundation loads of money which the people who work for the foundation gave to some charities'

Whilst William chats to footballers about mental health, and Kate says something about nature, and this is what is in the RF News section as what they have actually done themselves.

A lot of sources will be staff, friends of friends etc who are being courted by different reporters - some paid for their info.

These sources don’t want to be named because they will then be outed to the RF and either sacked or iced out of friendship groups.

It doesn’t even have to be a direct source who is giving info. You know how people love to gossip - you get one footman who tells his family that he heard William having a furious row with his father, or he thinks Carole Middleton is lording it around Ken P like she owns it.

One off silly anecdotes get passed around - make their way to a reporter who adds into an article that sources say the King and his Heir are at loggerheads because Carole Middleton is seeing too much of the grandkids.

And then the original story where the reporter probably did at least know the origin of his ‘sourced’ story gets reposted by other publications ‘a source told the Sun blah blah blah’ and then it gets retold over and over on social media until it’s become ‘fact’ that ‘we all know William has a temper and Charles is jealous of the Middletons’.

In the case of the community group I referred to it was financial support from the RF, administrative support in looking for longer term funding, and personal interaction from William up to a year later documented on their own website (I haven't looked further than a year).

Thanks for this Wordler you obviously have a lot of first hand knowledge about this subject.

I would argue though, that just like the Erskine May convention, there is a certain way that the Royal Rota is meant to operate, as you explained very eloquently, versus how it actually operates in reality, leading to the deferential reporting we have had up until now.

If you can tune in to You Tube there is a very interesting podcast with Richard Coles and Emily Andrews and one episode is called,

“Do the Royals hate the press?”

I tried to link it and failed!

Emily Andrews has been part of the royal rota since 2012 and in that episode she describes how, when she has done, or written. things that the Palace didn’t like, they would threaten to throw her off the Rota.

For example, she explains that, just after the so-called Sandringham Summit, she was in the gardens at BP, standing behind a rope with other journalists in the rota, observing Harry interact with rugby players, and with the help of another journalist, she asked a fairly innocuous question about the biggest story of the time, which was H & M leaving.

And she was rung the next day by one of the grey suits in the palace who said,

“Emily, if you ever ask anything like that ever again, you will not be asked back on these engagements.”

And that is just one example of how BP seek to control the narrative.

So I don’t doubt that the Royal Rota serves the practical purpose of cutting down on the number of journalists attending one event, but at the same time, it does make it easier for the Palace to steer the story the way they want it to go,

No, it isn't true. Edward and Sophie weren't even engaged, let alone married at the time of Diana's funeral, so she wouldn't have been there anyway.

@wordler are you suggesting that treating third hand unattributed gossip as a reasonable source of information is useful? People often quote newspaper articles as evidence on here as though they were fact

Yes. Delivering through others is a thing. Ask any CEO….

It’s useful to the media who make money off it because it’s click worthy.

I think it’s important to be able to read and assess the words being reported - lots of times the reporter will be giving their opinion on something and it gets quoted as fact.

So someone like Richard Eden will say ‘I think William will be furious with Harry’ and then the headline reads

“William furious with Harry”

But the lede reads “William will be furious with Harry, according to Royal expert Richard Eden”

But that headline gets scraped by a million internet bots and clickbait sites and Google
search fills up with breaking news of the latest ‘Royal row’.

The RF rarely use their own money to support charitable projects.

Their MO has always been to highlight causes or use their influence and prestige to “persuade” rich entrepreneurs to fund charitable endeavours.

And that’s fine, except when the there is an allegation that someone gets a passport in return, or the entrepreneur in question is involved in something dodgy, say like money laundering or gun smuggling for example, or the readies possibly arrive in cash form in Fortnum and Mason carrier bags.

Well again like our politicians the media editors don’t have to roll over to threats from a royal department.

Someone from the palace press office can threaten to remove a specific reporter but the rota pass is to the publication they write for - the paper would just send another reporter to take her place. And they try to ban a whole publication - that would end very badly in terms of push back from the press as a whole and for publicity.

If I’d have been Emily I’d have asked my editor to back me up and explain to the palace press office about the freedom of the press and how it wouldn’t look good to be threatening to silence individual reporters.

I do believe the carrot rather than the stick is employed to a certain effect - as in promise an exclusive in return for something not to be published. That’s a common PR tactic but the media don’t want to admit they are so openly bribed so they don’t talk about that side of things very often.

Amy Robach

This is the hot mic moment Virginia was referring to. Amy interviewed Virgina Guiffre in 2016

Okay having watched that whole clip for the first time the wider picture is much more interesting and confusing.

She says she was told ‘No one knows who Epstein is, he’s not interesting’

This was in 2016 - of course everyone knew who he was - he’d already been to prison once by then.

Who was telling her it was a non story.

She also says that Virginia told her about Bill Clinton and Alan Dershowitz.

Dershowitz was the man who Virginia backed down about and said she might have been mistaken when he threatened to counter sue.

I’m sure Clinton’s lawyers were also putting a lot of pressure on ABC as well as the palace.

Also there must be something legally flawed with the interview as they haven’t even used clips from it - despite Epstein being dead and the files now coming out.

If you had an interview with Virginia in the can you’d definitely bring clips of it out now.

Someone at ABC, someone powerful has decided to kill the whole thing.

The palace press office shouldn't be threatening anybody, and whilst the pass for the royal rota is for the publication, those publications are prone to having specific royal correspondents who would lose that placement if they didn't toe the line.

Using the "carrot" of promising an exclusive in exchange for not publishing something else less salubrious is also not the actions of a press office dedicated to being above board in their dealings.

The press may be criticised for going along with this, but it's the monarchy and their offices who have implemented it, and they who need to carry most of the responsibility.

But it suits them to have the press in hock to them, they can hide what they want then, and use the media as their own PR arm.