Where is Catherine, Princess of Wales? The
internet is rife with ‘Katespiracies’
The royal’s absence has led to a proliferation of
conspiracy theories after announcement of a mysterious abdominal surgery
Erum Salam
Fri 15 Mar 2024 15.00 CET
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/mar/15/where-is-princess-catherine-conspiracy-theories
It seems
that everyone has recently become fixated on one question: where in the world
is the Princess of Wales?
We’ve long
known the world is watching the royal family, but the visible absence of
Catherine has sent social media and US news outlets into a tailspin – driving
even those ordinarily not interested in the royals to pay attention.
The latest
saga surrounding the royal family began when Kensington Palace announced on 17
January that the future queen consort was due for a mysterious abdominal
surgery at the London Clinic. The world was told that she would be in the
hospital and out of commission for “10 to 14 days” – therefore out of the
public eye until Easter. Prince William postponed some engagements that same
day.
Then a
series of coincidences made internet sleuths suspicious.
Victoria
Howard, a royal commentator and founder of a website devoted to the royal
family called The Crown Chronicles, offered some clarity on the princess’s
recent accidental entrance into the global spotlight.
“The length
of Kate’s absence is unusual which suggests a significant procedure, but the
lack of details is what is driving the rumor mill,” Howard said. “For those
abroad, who don’t have a royal family and liken them more to celebrities, they
can’t quite understand why the details aren’t being shared.”
Shortly
after, on 5 February, it was announced that King Charles was diagnosed with
cancer. Now, two leading figures in the royal family have health issues around
the exact same time but only one of them has been seen.
“There is a
bit of a vacuum in the royal family right now, because of both ongoing health
issues, so this lack of news and public visibility of royals is driving some of
this narrative,” Howard said. “The timing is unusual being so close together
but for me it’s an example of how the offices do not communicate that well, and
equally their different approaches with the level of detail provided.”
But Howard
cautioned coincidences can happen and that “health often doesn’t align with
your schedule”.
“As Kate is
not monarch there is no cause for concern. Charles has counsellors of state who
can be appointed and step in should he be incapacitated,” she said.
Still,
rumors are swirling and many outside the UK, particularly in the US, have
become obsessed with this Middleton mystery.
Theories,
or “Katespiracies”, about the princess’s whereabouts range from Kate being
revealed as the newest contestant on the TV gameshow The Masked Singer to
getting a Brazilian butt lift (or some other cosmetic work).
Howard
called some of these conspiracies “quite frankly ludicrous”.
“To not be
away for so long due to real health issues would be highly risky and take
advantage of public goodwill,” she said. “No sensible communications team would
allow them to do that.”
Middleton
was reportedly seen on 4 March in a car with her mother, but the poor quality
of the photo has not convinced some of her fans.
On 10
March, things reached a bit of an apex when it was revealed that a family photo
of Catherine and her three children posted by the princess on her Instagram
account was Photoshopped. Various discrepancies in the image led to even more
speculation, prompting major news agencies such as the Associated Press to pull
the photo from distribution “because at closer inspection, it appears that the
source had manipulated the image in a way that did not meet AP’s photo
standards”.
This proved
cataclysmic for gossip, which seemingly pushed the princess to issue a rare
statement explaining the situation: “Like many amateur photographers, I
occasionally experiment with editing. I wanted to express my apologies for any
confusion the family photograph we shared yesterday caused. I hope everyone
celebrating had a very happy Mother’s Day. C”
The
metadata of the file shows that the image was processed in Photoshop first on 8
March at 9.54pm local time and again on 9 March at9.39am local time, per an ABC
News report.
The very
next day on 11 March, William and someone who appeared to be Catherine were
seen leaving Windsor Castle together in a car. But faces were obstructed so
it’s not clear if it was actually the princess.
Still, the
princess’s spokesperson doubled down on Catherine’s perfectly normal condition:
“We were very clear from the outset that the Princess of Wales was out until
after Easter and Kensington Palace would only be providing updates when
something was significant.”
The
spokesperson underscored the princess was “doing well”.
The US,
which has no royal family, is giving the princess the “celebrity-in-crisis”
treatment previously seen with the likes of Britney Spears or Amanda Bynes. If
not by those on social media like TikTok, the media coverage of Catherine’s
every move has shown no signs of letting up.
US news
outlets like the Washington Post, ABC News and NPR have even weighed in on the
altered photo debacle. The Los Angeles Times likened Kate and sister-in-law
Duchess of Sussex’s drama to that surrounding Diana, Princess of Wales, who
dominated international news headlines in the late 80s and 90s.
The royals
expert and former BuzzFeed News reporter Ellie Hall told Nieman Lab last week
that she believed the obsession with Catherine stems from “distrust” people
have of the royals – in no small part to Diana’s legacy.
“People
have started to really distrust not just the royal family – as an
institution/bureaucracy, not necessarily the individual members – but the
reporters and outlets that cover the royal family,” Hall said, adding: “A lot
of people still hold a grudge against the royals because of Princess Diana and
wonder about the circumstances of her death. I also feel like a lot of this
distrust stems from what Harry and Meghan have said since leaving working royal
life. Their descriptions of a back-stabbing, machiavellian organization in
interviews and Harry’s memoir Spare have definitely made an impact on the
public’s perception of the monarchy and the royal reporting beat.”
So, what’s
really going on and who has the answers?
Howard
noted that “Kensington Palace has been very reactive”, which is unusual because
they mostly don’t “comment or respond in other cases”. She says it’s “the wrong
approach if they wanted to ease people’s worries” and “doing so shows real
concern about the conversation and indicates their level of panic essentially”.
Perhaps the
former Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger said it best in 2020, pointing
out: “It is unusually difficult to judge the reliability of most royal
reporting because it is a world almost devoid of open or named sources.
“So, in
order to believe what we’re being told, we have to take it on trust that there
are currently legions of ‘aides’, ‘palace insiders’, ‘friends’ and ‘senior
courtiers’ constantly WhatsApping their favourite reporters with the latest
gossip. It has been known to happen. Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t. We just
don’t know.”
Conspiracies and kill notices: how Kate’s edited
photo whirled the rumour mill
With Princess of Wales out of sight for health
reasons, impact of altered family photo has been magnified
Esther
Addley
Fri 15 Mar
2024 15.13 CET
On Tuesday,
as the crisis in Gaza continued, turmoil built in Haiti and Joe Biden and
Donald Trump were confirmed as their parties’ presidential candidates, the
White House press secretary was asked a question by a journalist that caused
her, briefly, to laugh.
“Does the
White House ever digitally alter photos of the president?”, Karine Jean-Pierre
was asked by a reporter.
“Why would
we digitally alter photos? Are you comparing us to what is going on in the UK?”
she replied. “No – that is not something that we do here.”
When
Kensington Palace released an apparently candid photograph last weekend of the
Princess of Wales and her children, timed to coincide with Mother’s Day, it no
doubt expected the usual warm reception, perhaps with a few approving front
pages.
One week
on, it is fair to say things have not gone to plan. After multiple clumsy edits
to the photo were identified, five leading photo agencies issued an almost
unprecedented “kill notice” of the “manipulated” image.
Since then,
not only the White House press corps but large sections of the world’s media
have been fascinated by the photograph – and what it may say about the
princess, who has been recovering from surgery – putting the royals at the
centre of a dangerous crisis of credibility.
If you’re
caught being untruthful once, after all, why should anyone ever believe you? In
Spain, some outlets have repeated claims, rubbished by the palace last month,
that the princess is in a coma. On US talkshows, longstanding if highly
libellous rumours about the royal marriage, similarly denied, are being openly
aired and mocked.
And on
social media, needless to say, the unfounded conspiracies are wilder still.
Kate has had a facelift, or she is in hiding, or has been replaced by a body
double. Most are easy to dismiss, but when even the ITV royal editor, Chris
Ship, one of the select handful of “royal rota” journalists who are briefed by
the palace, posts a tweet that begins: “I’ve never been much of a conspiracy
theorist but …”, the Firm undeniably has a problem.
Who would
be a royal? According to the palace, lest we forget, the 42-year-old mother of
three has undergone major abdominal surgery and is not well enough to appear
publicly. When the operation was first revealed on 17 January, Kensington
Palace said she was not expected to make any appearances until at least Easter.
That, they insist, has not changed. So why the frenzied conspiracies?
Perhaps
because Catherine remains media catnip, and is incredibly important to the
royal public image; three months without her was always going to be a
challenge. Things would arguably have been more manageable were it not for the
unhappy coincidence of King Charles’s announcements of his prostate treatment
and cancer .
While
Catherine had requested privacy over her diagnosis, the king and his Buckingham
Palace press team opted to be more open, though the type of cancer has not been
revealed. Most were happy to accept this as the princess’s right, yet the fact
the king has remained somewhat visible, even while undergoing cancer treatment,
made the absolute silence from Catherine all the more evident.
What tipped
online mutterings into febrile speculation was when the Prince of Wales pulled
out of the funeral of his godfather on 27 February, citing only a “personal
matter”. The Mother’s Day photo was evidently an attempt to settle the mood;
instead, its inept handling turned an uncomfortable drama into a full-blown
crisis. Even a brief apology, signed in Catherine’s name, did not help. Either
palace advisers had not grasped the gravity of their mistake, or – just
possibly – the royal couple, so protective of their children’s privacy, were
resisting their guidance.
Can they
recover from it? Only if they change tack, says Emma Streets, an associate
director at the communications agency Tigerbond who specialises in crisis PR.
There remains a lot of empathy towards the princess, she says, adding: “I think
[the episode] proves that she’s only human. But it’s crucial that the palace do
not repeat a [mistake] on this scale.”
They will
have to provide some form of update on the princess’s health by Easter, says
Streets, whether or not Catherine is well enough to resume normal public
appearances. “I think they really need to maintain that timeline to avoid any
further controversy. So the pressure is on for the comms team to handle that
without putting a foot wrong, and really, meticulously, plan.”
Streets
says the royal family’s long-practised strategy of “never complain, never
explain” is outdated. “That doesn’t work today, given the speed that this story
will spread online, and I think that massively needs addressing from a
strategic point of view.”
That view
is echoed by Lynn Carratt, the head of talent at digital specialists Press Box
PR, who says she has been “racking my brains” trying to understand why
Kensington Palace did not simply release the undoctored image. “They could have
put this to bed straight away,” she says.
“There
needs to be an overhaul of their comms strategy and a bit of honesty and trust
with the press. I kind of understand why there isn’t – but they need a whole
new approach to PR, to bring it into the modern world of the media.
“We’re not
just talking about print press and broadcast, when it’s now social media and
the digital space where people are consuming the news. It’s very different, and
you need to do PR differently for that space.”
Pranksters dupe Tucker Carlson into believing
they edited Princess of Wales photo
Josh Pieters and Archie Manners posed as ‘George’, a
Kensington Palace employee, in interview with former Fox News host
Richard
Luscombe
Sat 16 Mar
2024 16.58 GMT
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/16/pranksters-dupe-tucker-carlson-kate-middleton
Pranksters
claiming to be a Kensington Palace employee fired over the Kate Middleton
edited photograph fiasco say they duped former Fox News host Tucker Carlson
into interviewing them for his streaming show.
In a video
posted on X that has already received more than a million views, Josh Pieters
and Archie Manners explained how they concocted a story about being released by
the Prince and Princess of Wales for “not doing a good enough job” in
manipulating a photograph of Middleton and her children that has stoked an
international furore and endless conspiracy theories.
The
“disgruntled former employee” act was apparently convincing enough to fool
production staff at the Tucker Carlson Network (TCN), who invited Manners,
posing as the royal couple’s former digital content creator, to a London studio
and an interview with the rightwing personality.
“That was
great, and really interesting too. I didn’t expect to be as interested in it as
I was because you told a really great story,” Carlson tells Manners after
listening to a made-up tale about how the infamous photograph was actually
taken by Middleton’s uncle in December, and that a Christmas tree in the
background had to be edited out.
The
pranksters, whose YouTube channel Josh & Archie showcases a series of
celebrity hoaxes, told Deadline they “stroked Carlson’s ego” by offering their
story as an exclusive because “mainstream media in the UK wouldn’t touch it”.
They
convinced TCN researchers of their authenticity by creating a fake contract of
employment that featured the words Every Little Helps, the motto of the British
supermarket chain Tesco, in Latin on a Kensington Palace crest, and a clause in
which the royals reserved the right to “amputate one limb of their choosing” if
Manners failed a probationary period.
“If Tucker
Carlson’s people read this, why on earth would they let you on the show?”
Pieters says in the video.
Manners
told Deadline that following the interview, TCN told him it would be aired
early the next week, but that he and Pieters decided to break cover now to
avoid misinformation being broadcast to the network’s 530,000 followers on X.
“We didn’t
want to cause any more rumors, that are not true, to go out to lots and lots of
people,” he said. “We just didn’t want to be too worthy about that in our
video.”
In the
interview, Carlson questions Manners about the photograph, which was recalled
by several photo agencies when numerous anomalies were discovered. A subsequent
palace statement explaining Middleton was experimenting with editing “like many
amateur photographers do” failed to offer reassurance, and set in motion a
chain of headline-dominating events that even prompted questions at the White
House.
“When
William and Kate put that photo out, they knew that photo was taken at
Christmas, and they put it out alongside a statement wishing everyone a happy
Mother’s Day, and told the world that William took it,” Manners tells Carlson.
“He didn’t
take it. Gary Goldsmith [Middleton’s uncle] took it.”
In their
initial emailed approach to TCN, the pair posed as a palace employee named
George, who said he was “about to be scapegoated” for the furore and “in the
process of being let go”.
“I am all
too aware of the Royal Family’s ability to throw people like me under the bus
in order to protect their reputation,” the email states.
The
Guardian has contacted TCN for comment.
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