Racialised media coverage of Meghan Markle

Many of us find some escapism in magazines, digital publications or news articles about celebrities. From the outside, it seems that the point of media coverage of celebrities is its low stakes. Headlines about glitzy outfit choices, romance scandals, extravagant shopping sprees or petty fights in palatial mansions appear to be a world away from the ever-looming threats to regular folk of economic, political or climate crisis.

Yet, media coverage of celebrities, both in its volume and content, can reflect a society’s attitudes to topics like race, class, gender, sexuality, family and politics. In addition, the way in which particular celebrities are venerated or criticised in the media can provide opportunities to reflect on our social values. Never is this more present than in headlines about the women of the British royal family, by whom Australian audiences have been enthralled for decades.

When first pictured with future husband Prince Harry in 2016, Meghan Markle, a divorced, biracial American actress, embodied a unique figure in the public imagination. Within weeks, Markle became the world’s most-Googled woman.

Like ‘commoner’ royal women before her, including sister-in-law Kate Middleton and late mother-in-law Diana Spencer, it could be expected that Markle would have some struggles in negotiating her new identity and Royal life, and that these charming social faux-pas would become tabloid fodder.  Even so, it was notable that the media coverage of Meghan Markle was largely negative, differing from her predecessors in ways that highlighted racial distinctions rather than just class differences.

First to cover the relationship between Markle and the Prince was the tabloid newspaper the Daily Mail, with a front-page article titled ‘Straight Outta Compton’, using the lyrics of a violent gangsta-rap song in referring to the ‘tatty, gang-infested and crime-ridden’ neighbourhood in which Meghan was raised. In the article, Markle’s mother Doria Ragland, a successful teacher and social worker, was pictured against a grey wall in rumpled clothing, flip-flops and locs hairstyle, in an image reminiscent of a police mugshot. In bold print, the article highlighted crimes in the local area as well as a decades-old bankruptcy filing by Ragland.

At first glance, the headline accurately identifies the suburb of Los Angeles where Markle spent her childhood. Yet, to the public, this article and those that followed symbolically connected Markle to Black criminality, poverty and untrustworthiness, in a way that can be seen to undermine her suitability as a Duchess, the wife of a Prince, even a mother.

Consider the following contrasting headlines about Markle and sister-in-law Kate Middleton.

Source: The Daily Mail

In the seven years since the Straight Outta Compton piece, thousands of media articles have covered Markle in similarly pejorative ways, to avid consumption by primarily white, female readerships. The ‘Angry Black Woman Trope’ is unfortunately a not-uncommon media occurrence, whereby Black women specifically are caricatured as aggressive, masculine and animalistic; positioning them as threats to the families, wealth and safety of (White) people. Unlike other royal wives, headlines and articles about Markle regularly employ language associated with criminality and violence, using words such as ‘attack,’ ‘greedy,’ ‘aggressive,’ ‘cruel,’ ‘scary,’ and ‘manipulative’, further harming Markle’s perceived trustworthiness in the eyes of the public. As a result, even Markle’s own attempts to speak for herself are met with skepticism or, in some cases, completely disregarded.

In 2018, global headlines were made that “greedy” Markle had made “poor” [Princess] Kate cry in a jealous rage over a tiara, terrifying onlookers. Despite no evidence, and a clear refutation of the story by Markle and other witnesses, the story was nevertheless impactful and disseminated worldwide.

Audiences have always enjoyed a palace scandal. Yet it is unique in Markle’s case that even those not usually engaged with royal news seemed to find it entirely believable that Markle was not only uncouth (like other ‘commoner’ wives) but actually dangerous.

One Daily Express headline from 2021 is notable for its histrionics. Published at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic and amidst a cost of living crisis in Britain, “Worst Royal Crisis in 85 Years” instead referred to Markle’s “bombshell” interview with Oprah Winfrey, in which she shared her experience as the subject of racism within the royal institution. To put this into context, bear in mind that in the preceding 85 years the British monarchy faced crises including World War II, the Falklands War, the Northern Ireland Troubles, the attempted kidnapping of Princess Anne and the untimely death of Princess Diana – all of which evidently paled in comparison to the danger of two Black women in honest conversation.

In Australia, women’s magazines began to speculate about their beloved Princess Diana’s youngest son. Despite his wealth, power and privilege, they suggested, Prince Harry was a powerless victim of his wife’s manipulation. Media outlets captioned paparazzi pictures of Prince Harry with captions of ‘help me’, ‘save me’, or emotive language like ‘desperate plea’, ‘flee’, and ‘heartbroken prince’. Markle, it appeared, proposed a risk not only to the heart of the motherless Prince, but to the stability of the Commonwealth as a whole.

To bolster the language used in media coverage implying Markle’s nefarious motivations, photographs were often utilised of her frowning or with her mouth open, signifying aggressive or angry behaviour, while smiling pictures were captioned as ‘smug’ or ‘smirking’. In contrast, Princess Kate and Prince Harry were imaged as frightened, distressed or vulnerable. In this way, audiences were couched to interpret appearances and body language to align with stereotypes and respond in kind, seemingly in sympathy to Markle’s perceived victims.

Timing has been a crucial factor in how coverage of Markle has diverged from that of her white counterparts. Since 2016, media headlines have been set against a backdrop of heightened social and racial tensions and growing acceptance of hate speech in Western culture, influenced by Brexit, the election of President Trump, and events like the tragic Grenfell Towers fire. Additionally, the modern 24/7 digital news cycle has influenced how audiences consume and spread news through their social media channels. Ignoring formal journalistic standards of accuracy or ethics, unsubstantiated negative media claims about Markle could thus become widely accepted as truths simply through their volume and ease of sharing.

As Markle’s fame has grown, so has her public unpopularity; she has become a media phenomenon that is invaluable to the same media outlets and consumers that demonise her. Interest in Markle has been directly linked to a recent upswing in women’s magazine readership in Australia. Meanwhile, since 2021 the Mail Online (the global aggregate of The Daily Mail) has overtaken the New York Times to become the most popular news publication on the planet. Markle is the Mail’s most popular subject: they published nearly 1700 stories about her in 2023.

While no celebrity should be beyond journalistic criticism, the onslaught of racialised media coverage against Markle appears to abhor her existence as a Black woman taking up space in the elite world of British royalty. In effect, this type of coverage seeks to reinforce social inequities rather than challenge power structures. The collective willingness to believe and disseminate specific tropes about the biracial Duchess reflects how ingrained racist stereotyping can be.

Media coverage of Meghan Markle can be seen as an example of how meaning can be constructed to serve particular purposes. It raises ethical questions for both media and consumers, who together can cause harm and perpetuate injustices like racism, in the name of producing or consuming celebrity content. Responding to racially-coded imagery and language, digital consumers may feel justified in participating in vitriol against Markle – perceiving themselves to be acting upon family values or morality. The Angry Black Woman Trope in media coverage can be linked to ongoing stereotypes that result in far poorer outcomes for Black women than their White counterparts, in many areas including job security and safety, but particularly in health and maternal care. Likewise, public outcry against Markle since 2016 has not been limited to online comment sections or letters to magazine editors. In 2022, the British Metropolitan Police confirmed that they continued to navigate multiple ‘active and credible death threats’ against Markle and her children, including by neo-Nazi groups. Racialised media coverage has challenging and potentially tragic real-life outcomes not only for celebrities like Meghan Markle, but for many Black women and minoritised people.

Image: eNCA, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons