U.K. tabloid newspaper publisher Associated Newspapers says CBS’ recent broadcast of Oprah Winfrey’s tell-all interview with pregnant Meghan Markle and Prince Harry included “inaccurate, misleading and divisive content” attributed to its publications and is urging the network to remove it.
The Oprah With Meghan and Harry: A CBS Primetime Special, which aired last Sunday, March 7, highlighted many negative tabloid headlines, mostly from U.K. outlets, written about the Duchess of Sussex over the years, and especially after she became pregnant with her and Harry’s now-22-month-old son Archie Harrison. Associated Newspapers, who recently lost a legal privacy case filed by Meghan, has now accused ViacomCBS in a letter of doctoring headlines in its televised montages of press coverage of the duchess (watch a clip above).
The broadcaster had no immediate comment when reached by E! News. A spokesperson for Oprah’s Harpo Productions said in a statement to NBC News, “Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, shared in the interview their personal story. We stand by the broadcast in its entirety.”
“Associated Newspapers, publishers of Mail Online, The Daily Mail and The Mail On Sunday, fully support the importance of freedom of speech and the First Amendment,” the group said in a statement to E! News. “It does not believe in seeking to stifle debate or criticism based on accurate facts, including on the vital subject of racism.”
“However, the montage in this programme, said to be of British newspaper ‘headlines,’ contained images which had been doctored or presented as headlines when they were not,” the statement continued. “A number of images were not of British newspapers at all. This is indefensible. It was inaccurate and viewers of their programme will have been seriously misled. It lent apparent support to claims that the Duchess of Sussex had been subjected to racist coverage by the British press.”