The extraordinary scenes on Saturday as the Queen welcomed an American actor into her family cloaked an uncomfortable reality. Despite the apparent public appreciation of the pomp and pageantry, the monarchy’s hold on its position is nothing like as stable as the hysteria might suggest.
Nor should the 230 pages of coverage of the event in Sunday’s national newspapers blind us to the fact that the days of newsprint are numbered too. Without denying that there was an intense and genuine public interest in the marriage of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, we need to remove the blinkers to view it for what it is: a turning point in Britain’s history.
In truth, two institutions, monarchy and the press, are walking hand in hand towards their doom after 400 years of interdependence. Viewed rationally, we can see how popular newspapers – which is an oxymoronic term nowadays – spent months manufacturing synthetic public excitement about the marriage. Their coverage, far from reflecting modernity, was marked by all the old tropes: fawning fascination, carping criticism, preposterous speculation and the elevation of the trivial to an implausible level of significance.
Source: Royal wedding shows growing irrelevance of monarchy d press | Roy Greenslade | The Guardian
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