Why did Meghan and Harry Step Back? Experts Weigh In

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: But don`t you agree that the British tabloid press is savage? It can destroy after it embraces, and it turns on a dime like that.

DICKIE ARBITER, FORMER PRESS SECRETARY TO QUEEN ELIZABETH II: It turns on a dime like that. The royals are not the only people that it turns on. They turn on celebrities.

AMANPOUR: But they are particularly in the focus all the time, because they sell tabloids.

ARBITER: Yes. The royals are vulnerable because the royals don`t fight back. And the royals can`t fight back.

AMANPOUR: There you go.

ARBITER: And that is the problem. But you talk about Diana. Diana was partially savaged by the press. She was pursued by the paparazzi. But Diana courted the media as well. She used to phone up the media for stories. And I remember traveling back from the States with Diana once from New York, once from Washington. And as soon as we were up there, she unbuckled her belt and went to the back of the plane to chat up with the media. You couldn`t actually keep her away from the media.

AMANPOUR: Well, you could say she was trying to chat them up and talk to them as a normal person, rather than have — she was pursued, and it was pretty ugly. I remember listening to what — the horrible words that the paps used to shouted her just to get him to turn around and look at them. This is what Meghan said about — I think about what she had been told by her friends when she first met Harry. Let`s just listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MEGHAN MARKLE, DUCHESS OF SUSSEX: I first met my now husband. My friends were really happy because I was so happy. But my British friends said to me, I`m sure he`s great, but you can`t do it, because the British tabloids will destroy your life. And I very naively — oh, I`m American. We don`t have that there. What are you talking about? That doesn`t make any sense. I`m not in tabloids. I didn`t get it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ARBITER: That`s pretty rich saying, in America, you don`t have tabloids. What is “The National Enquirer”?

(CROSSTALK)

AMANPOUR: No, you do. Of course you do have national…

ARBITER: Of course you do.

AMANPOUR: But it`s very different.

MARK LANDLER, LONDON BUREAU CHIEF, THE NEW YORK TIMES: I think there`s a real clash here in media culture, because Meghan is not only an American. She`s an American actress who was in Hollywood, who had a Hollywood agent, who was represented by a Hollywood public relations firm. Those people are used to a very different way of interacting with the press. It`s generally far more controlled. It`s far more stage-managed. And I think that part of what she has struggled with is not just the tabloids as an institution, but the fact that they are so radically different from the media relationship that she was accustomed to in the United States, in Hollywood. And that clash is playing out in a dramatic way in Harry and Meghan`s struggle.