Meghan and Harry’s interview highlights the U.K. tabloids’ power to save, or to “squash”

London — Oprah Winfrey’s interview with Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, has highlighted the hugely significant relationship between the British royals and the U.K.’s tabloid newspapers. The tabloids are obsessed with the royal family — because the royal family sells papers.

But while “everybody loved” Meghan’s honesty and reveled in her fairy tale wedding to the prince, Kelvin MacKenzie, the former editor of the U.K.’s top-selling tabloid newspaper, The Sun, said the British public soon fell out of love with the duchess.

“I think the way she is reported [on] is done in a manner which is to make her look bad,” he told CBS News’ Holly Williams. “Because people want that.”

Meghan says royals discussed son’s skin color… 01:01

Public polling in the U.K. shows Meghan’s approval ratings eclipsed by those of Queen Elizabeth II, Prince William and his wife Kate, and even Camilla, the wife of William and Harry’s father Prince Charles.

But who shaped that public opinion in the first place? Journalist Ayesha Hazarika said it was the powerful, sometimes “vicious” tabloids themselves — with headlines ranging from racist, to ridiculous.

The Sun is not merely the most-read tabloid in Britain, it’s the widest circulated newspaper, period, by a long shot. In fact, the top four newspapers in Britain, by circulation, are all tabloids.

A television journalist holds a copy of the British tabloid newspaper The Sun as she reports outside of Buckingham Palace in London, January 9, 2020, following the announcement that Britain’s Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and his wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, plan to step down as “senior” members of the Royal Family. TOLGA AKMEN/AFP/Getty

“There’s a bit of a rule, which is, you should never take the tabloid press on,” Hazarika told Williams. “They’re so powerful. They’ll squash you forever.”

But that’s exactly what the Duchess of Sussex did, directly, with lawsuits and public complaints.

Meghan Markle wins privacy case 02:48

“We haven’t created this monster machine around us in terms of clickbait and tabloid fodder, you’ve [the royal family] allowed that to happen,” Meghan told Oprah.

The royal family has relied for decades on positive coverage by the tabloids to justify its very existence.

“Worried that Meghan was winning the PR battle,” MacKenzie told CBS News, the family known colloquially in Britain as “The Firm” has now been using the media to fend off a threat.

Prince Harry on his family relationship 01:53

But Meghan is a duchess who won’t be cowed, and she has her own global audience — and some powerful friends.

“She has stood up to them, and the one thing that bullies hate is being stood up too,” Hazarika told Williams, referring both to some members of the royal family and the tabloids.

The bombshell interview was to air in the U.K. on Monday night, giving the British public a chance to decide for themselves who the bad guy really is — the pregnant duchess who says her treatment in this country gave her suicidal thoughts, or the tabloid media that has often portrayed her as dominating and manipulative.

Meghan and Harry are having a baby girl 00:54

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