“You know something will happen right after this to kill our mashup,” I joked to Amanda after our recording was finished.
Amanda laughed and then went deadly silent, her eyes glowing white as she bellowed, spraying sand everywhere: “Now you will never see the light of day again!”
That didn’t happen at all. That was Aladdin.
Less than an hour after we recorded, Amanda sent me a text: Archewell was marked “current”. The ‘non story’ was wrapped up in less than 24 hours.
This mashup is still relevant though. It’s about this Archewell/Prince Harry/Meghan Markle story, but it’s really about why stories break through when they do, media literacy, and checking our own biases when investigating a story.
In this episode we trace back to the story’s probable origins, take a look at the documents we could see online at the time for Archewell, and we spoke about what we could expect from the media when inevitably the check cleared and Archewell was no longer marked ‘delinquent.’ How would they cover this update, if they covered it at all?
As of 9:15pm EST on Tuesday May 14th 2024 we have some answers:
Page Six—the outlet credited with breaking the news—has a new piece out with the update, but the original reporting remains with no corrections or updates. I doubt it’ll do the rounds on social the way the initial news did.
Another outlet mentioned in our convo, People Magazine, wrote an update with this bizarre headline:
They didn’t exactly refute, a clerical error was fixed.
‘Delinquent’ wasn’t an allegation, it’s a category a charity is put in, in the state of California for missing fees and/or forms, even if it later turns out the check just wasn’t processed.
The framing of this story makes it seem like this was a bigger story than it was—because that was the original promise. You can’t admit that you served up a nothingburger.
To give credit where credit is due, People did update the original story to reflect the new information.
And finally, the Daily Mail, which had one of the better original articles on this from the tabloids, still has their two original stories up:
And then is the most recent story on their website:
They didn’t insist, it’s…over. Also buried in the piece? There’s reports that show the $200 check was delivered LAST YEAR.
This is all apart of a longer conversation we have about the state of journalism around Harry and Meghan specifically, online discourse that gets out of hand, and more.
Hope you enjoy.
-Meredith
RIP: Archewell 'Delinquency Stories' 5.13.24 - 5.14.24