Prince Harry gave two U.S. interviews ahead of the release of his memoir Spare, out today: one to 60 Minutes with Anderson Cooper, and one to Good Morning America with Michael Strahan.
Both programs revealed that they gave Buckingham Palace an opportunity to respond ahead of time, but that representatives for the Palace asked to see the interviews in full (or at least read their transcripts) before they would consider responding.
Because this runs contrary to both CBS' and ABC News' policies, both interviews ran with no comment from the Palace, which represents the interests of King Charles and Queen Camilla specifically.
"We reached out to Buckingham Palace for comment," Cooper said on 60 Minutes (via Us Weekly). "Its representatives demanded, before considering responding, 60 Minutes provided them with our report prior to airing it tonight, which is something we never do."
As for Strahan, he revealed, "We received a response from the law firm representing Buckingham Palace this morning, while we were on the air, saying that the palace needed to 'consider exactly what is said in the interview, in the context in which it appears' and asked that we supply them immediately with a copy of the entire interview, which we do not do as a news organization, as a matter of our policy."
Buckingham and Kensington Palaces have essentially kept mum so far amid the release of all these interviews and of Spare.
However, Prince Harry has been driving home the point that—according to him—members of the Royal Family and their press officers often surreptitiously brief the press about private matters, and are then quoted as "a royal source," "a senior royal source" or "a Palace insider," for example.
While reps for the Royal Family have (fairly predictably) not commented on that particular claim, royal author Omid Scobie alleged in one column for Yahoo! that this leaking to the media is common practice among members of the Firm.
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