Isla Campbell Checks In on the Sussex Situation, Concludes That the Story Is Now About the Media’s Relationship With Its Own Coverage, and Finds This More Interesting Than the Original Story
Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
By Isla Campbell | The London Prat
I made a resolution at the beginning of this year to write about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex only when something genuinely new happened, rather than when a new episode of coverage occurred in response to things that had already happened. This resolution has proved difficult to maintain because the media ecosystem that covers the Sussexes operates on a different definition of “new” than my editorial standards require. Under the media’s definition, a photograph of Meghan shopping in Montecito, Harry attending a polo match, or either of them giving an interview that reiterates positions they have previously stated constitutes news. Under my definition, these are not news. Under my definition, very little about the Sussexes has been news for approximately two years, during which time approximately seventeen hundred articles have been published about them in British newspapers alone. The coverage has become the story, which is the specific point I want to make and then will try to stop making for at least six months.
What Is Actually Happening With the Sussexes
They live in California. They are doing what people who have left a situation do: living their lives, pursuing their interests, and managing the specific challenge of being internationally famous while also wanting to be private, which is a contradiction that people who are internationally famous have not yet resolved and are unlikely to resolve by giving interviews about wanting to be private. Harry continues to be involved in charitable work related to mental health and veterans’ causes. Meghan has been building her lifestyle brand, As Ever, and producing content that her audience finds compelling and that the British press covers with an intensity inversely proportional to its actual news significance. Their children, who are not the story because they are children, are growing up. This is what is happening. You are welcome.
What the British Media Is Doing About This
The British media is publishing approximately four articles per day about the above. Four per day per major tabloid, roughly, over approximately a hundred articles per week across the British press about two people who live in California and are not, technically, news. The Bohiney Magazine analysis of Sussex media volume has documented the coverage density against news significance and found the ratio consistently remarkable. The London Prat has covered the coverage of the coverage, which is where I now find myself. The media ecosystem that covers the Sussexes has become self-referential in the specific way that ecosystems become when the audience for content about a topic exceeds the actual interesting things happening to the topic. This is a media criticism observation, not a Sussex observation. I am making it and then stopping for six months.
The One Thing Worth Noting
Harry’s memoir, “Spare,” and the Netflix documentary series changed the media environment around the Sussex story in ways that cannot be undone: the characterisation of palace dynamics, royal family relationships, and the specific grievances that motivated the departure from royal duties is now part of the public record in a way that it was not before. Whether those characterisations are accurate, partially accurate, or strategically curated is a question that only those present can answer, and they have answered it differently, and neither set of answers is adjudicable from outside. This is the situation. It will remain the situation. The coverage will continue. I will return to it in six months, at which point approximately 2,600 additional articles will have been published, and I will discover whether anything genuinely new has occurred. I suspect the answer will be no.
More laughs at The Daily Mash and NewsThump.
The Broader Context: What the Monarchy Represents in 2026
The British monarchy in 2026 is an institution that has survived by adapting while appearing not to change, which is the specific skill of institutions whose survival depends on the perception of continuity. The public is more sceptical than in previous generations, more willing to ask questions about cost and relevance, and simultaneously more willing to watch royal events with the appetite for spectacle that the institution has always relied on. These two things coexist in the same people, including the journalist who has attended six Trooping the Colours and finds herself moved by all of them, and who also has a list of republican philosophical objections that she writes down and then does not publish because they are not new and the monarchy is still there. The institution will continue to adapt. The coverage will continue. More from the Palace beat at Bohiney Magazine and at The London Prat’s royal coverage.
A Personal Note on Covering the Royal Family
Writing about the monarchy for a satirical publication requires a specific editorial posture that I will describe as “respectful irreverence”: taking the institution seriously enough to understand it, being honest about its contradictions, and finding the humour in those contradictions without descending into the kind of casual republican snark that would require me to pretend I am not moved by the balcony appearance at Trooping the Colour, which I am. I am moved by it annually. I find this embarrassing and honest simultaneously. The monarchy is an imperfect institution that Britain has decided, repeatedly by inaction rather than by explicit decision, to retain. It produces garden parties and horse parades and garden party sandwiches and the specific ninety seconds of royal attention that recipients describe for the rest of their lives. Whether this is enough to justify its existence is the question I will continue to examine, with genuine curiosity, from the press enclosure at every event I can get credentials for. The hats continue to improve. Next month: the Palace’s summer opening. Tickets are available. I recommend booking early.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/sussex-progress-report-isla-campbell-media/
