Piers Morgan fell on his own sword, or that belonging to the weather forecaster, Alex Beresford. You choose your battles and there were plenty of loopholes in the Harry and Meghan victim-fest for him to question, but instead he went for the jugular by outright calling Meghan a liar, and for the wrong subject by questioning her delicate mental health, completely. As a consequence her looked naive and out of step with a nation majoring on holding on to its mental stability after a year of lockdowns and death. Fraser Nelson in the Daily Telegraph puts the finger on Morgan’s soft spot in how Morgan, like many others, was “cancelled” out of Meghan’s life – the curse of “Meghan moves on” as it is known. Instead of moving on himself a weather forecaster publicly questions his inability to let go.
It is all an unfortunate sideshow in a much more important war. Piers Morgan may continue to live on in Twitter (as long as he behaves in the eyes of Twitter), but he has put back the case for defending press freedom with his egotism. There are serious questions that need to be asked about presentation of Harry and Meghan as victims and how it is used to nullify press freedom without question. Brendan O’Neill calls it in the “Unbearable victim complex of Meghan Markle” the cult of victimhood and emotionalism – and there’ll be identity politics, too.
Fraser Nelson in the Daily Telegraph “How do you solve a problem like Piers Morgan” (paywall) raises real issues about the state of journalism and media in the UK which the Harry and Meghan spectacle has only amplified in how allegation after allegation goes unquestioned. He raises the debate of the transgender lobby and climate change as one that editors would have to battle with, and the same of questioning issues around the pandemic like the lockdown. IPSO, the press regulator, is being manipulated by activists.
The need for a free press and investigative journalism has never been so necessary in period of victimhood being abused to undermine debate, identity politics cancelling out alternative opinion, and corporate politics channeling woke themes.
