Harry and Meghan interview with Oprah was entertainment, not news

National Post, 12 March 2021

When media subject certain personalities to rigorous fact-checking, but extend a credulous courtesy to the Sussexes, it is a clear double standard.

Oprah’s interview with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex has been well-picked over, with the various claims of Harry and Meghan scrutinized. It has a been a difficult week for the House of Windsor.

I return to the topic because it has also been a difficult week for the media, despite an immediate bump in viewers, readers and public interest. Many of the long-term trends in news were crystallized by the Oprah interview, some of which indicate why the credibility of the major media outlets has declined significantly.

Oprah made a pitch for credibility at the outset, clarifying that the Sussexes had not been paid for the interview. But the question was backwards. Harry and Meghan gave the interview without compensation to Oprah’s production company Harpo. Harpo sold the rights to CBS for US$7 million.

Meghan might have better begun the interview by asking Oprah whether the seven million the Sussexes had basically given her might influence the questions she would or would not ask. Oprah was nothing if not congenial, taking a pass on the most obvious questions.

The Sussexes feared “history repeating itself.” Was the prior estrangement of the Duchess from her own family relevant to this second estrangement from the Duke’s? Past performance is no guarantee of future results, as the disclaimer for investment advertising runs, but it is of passing interest to a journalist.

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