Scorned tabloids to Harry & Meghan: Show us your baby!

LONDON: Of the various press rituals surrounding the British royal family, few are sillier than the vigil outside a London maternity ward, where reporters wait on the street for a woman to go into labour.
For journalists its the opportunity to photograph a few inches of exposed royal baby before the child is whisked away. The only thing worse, it seems, is not being able to photograph the newborn at all.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle said last week that they were cancelling the photo opportunity, and that they would instead share their own photos of the newborn after they had “had an opportunity to celebrate privately as a new family”.
This did not go down well with the press, which reported the decision as a departure from more than 40 years’ tradition. The Sun, Britain’s highest-circulation tabloid, chided the couple for infringing on “our royal rights”.
“Keeping the nation in the dark over details, even after the birth, is a bad look for the royal couple,” the newspaper’s unsigned leader said on April
12. “The public has a right to know about the lives of those largely funded by their taxes. You can accept that, or be private citizens. Not both.”
In interviews, journalists were more raw. “It’s the way Harry is at the moment, he’s just got this bee in his bonnet that all the media are to be ignored,” said Arthur Edwards, 78, a photographer for The Sun, who has covered the births of five babies. “This is the shattering of a tradition that goes back for decades,” said one senior journalist, who would discuss the matter only on the condition of anonymity. “There is a price to be paid for that, and that price is mockery.”
A Daily Mail columnist, Jan Moir, last week lampooned Harry for teaming up with Oprah Winfrey for a TV series about mental health. She went on to pillory the couple for refusing to display the baby to photographers. “A royal baby is... a beacon of British joy,” she wrote. “What is the point of royals unless we can celebrate their baby royals.”
Then she went in for the kill. “Perhaps Oprah has snapped up the exclusive first-look baby rights?” she inquired. “I wouldn’t put it past her. Or them.”
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