Samantha Markle, the half-sister of Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle, compared the media of today to the Salem Witch Trials and claimed journalists had repeatedly put her in danger since the announcement of her half-sister’s engagement to Prince Harry.
During an exclusive interview with Breitbart News, Markle compared the press of today to the “Salem Witch Trials,” explaining how journalists would claim she was “slamming” her half-sister in a headline, when that wasn’t actually the case.
“We haven’t evolved much out of [the Salem Witch Trials] even though people like to believe so,” Markle proclaimed. “Several times the media would say the word ‘slamming’, even though my tone of voice and verbatim was never slamming. It may have been questioning or criticizing but not in a negative way. The long story short is that the tabloids would say, ‘Oh, she’s a vulture, she’s slamming her sister.'”
“In my interviews, I’ve said so many positive things, but they never printed those,” she complained. “They go so far now as to rise to levels of slander and defamation and I feel that they’ve taken this too far, because they know that the lawsuits won’t hurt them financially as much as the lack of sales will.”
“There used to be an ethical standard in journalism which doesn’t exist anymore, and what happens ironically is that when so many tabloids publish something, publications that were legitimate regurgitate that publication and maybe chop the words around a bit, and it surfaces then to the normal person, so it has the appearance of legitimacy,” Markle explained. “The world is moving at such a fast pace that people don’t take time to verify facts, so they think, ‘Ha it was in Newsweek so it must be true.’ Well, it was only in Newsweek because Newsweek copied Radar Online, and the Globe, and the Daily Mail, and whoever else at the tabloid level started it all.”
Markle continued to add that it was “unfortunate” that “publications don’t even verify facts” anymore.
“Like in Salem, the bigger the lie, the bigger the sensationalism, the bigger the bite around something… Once you create that emotionally involved public swell, you can’t de-escalate it,” declared Markle. “Nobody wants to look at the facts at that point because they’re so blinded by a flood of emotion and testosterone, and it’s impossible to backtrack, even with the truth, when the truth is good.”
“In Salem, with the witchhunt, with the schoolteacher, they said, ‘Get her, she’s a witch,’ and they get scared and angry so they can’t get the crowd down,” she elaborated. “When it’s fear-based you can’t bring it down. In the situation in our family, when someone is some horrible villain getting in the way of the fairy tale, they start throwing stones and burning people at the stake. It’s very much like that. I thought that the moral majority would have more empirical minds and would want to verify facts but they don’t surprisingly.”
“I think the press took it too far, and did rise to the level of slander and defamation,” Markle expressed. “It wasn’t just the press speaking their opinions about me, they were stating things as fact… I don’t think they really understand that they’re not just dealing with information and facts, they’re dealing with people’s lives, and I’ve had to move because it became a safety risk.”
“I thought ‘wow, if the paparazzi can find my address that easy and then they publish it, any crazy person can find out where I live,'” she pondered. “Any of those couple million people who think they hate me for this created, surrealistic reason can find out where I live. Am I really safe? Now we rise to the level of imminent danger, so I feel for journalists to print my address, knowing the danger and tension and emotionality of this whole wedding and the issues behind it, put me in danger.”
Markle confirmed that she “absolutely” thought the press had put her in serious danger, revealing, “I had home security and I had to move. Police response times are 4-8 minutes when your home alarm systems go off, and I’m in a wheelchair so I’m more of a target.”
“I thought ‘wow I would be long dead, and my house cleaned out before the police even arrived, and my address is public information,'” she proclaimed. “The royals have the luxury of security, and I’m not their responsibility, and I’m certainly not blaming this on them, but for the media to have my address and then publish it, certainly put me in danger. The royals and other people have the ability to move quickly into different areas and receive bodyguards, I didn’t have any of that.”
Markle also claimed to have received several “horrible” threats, and added, “Not knowing the population of people I was dealing with really scared me,” before recalling an incident where the paparazzi ran her car off the road.
“There was no accident in that we didn’t collide with anyone, but paparazzi pulled up close and in front of us and in order for us to not hit a barrier my boyfriend had to run us off the road, at which point I went flying over my seatbelt,” Markle recalled. “Paparazzi are going to do what they’re going to do, and I’m not going to stop them for chasing people to get a story, but that can get dangerous too, and needs a boundary.”
“When you’re out in public in a public forum you have no right to privacy, but when you’re in your home and you feel like you can’t sleep because your address has been published, and millions of people who could be criminals or psychotic… It becomes dangerous, and I became really upset when they did that with my father’s address,” she concluded. “To say you put yourself in danger by being outspoken is like those people who say those who spend their days on the beach in skimpy bikinis deserve to be raped. Just because you put yourself out there doesn’t mean assault is justified.”
Read Samantha Markle’s thoughts on free speech and her relationship with her half-sister in the other parts of this interview.
Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington, or like his page at Facebook.
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