Thread by @ellievhall

Wait, I should do a thread with the other Palace on-the-record stuff that I found that didn't make it into the story.

1.) Some of them are pretty amazing.

2.) I'd like to preemptively answer/explain/get ahead of questions/abuse about "cherrypicking" before I go to bed

Yeah, I still have way too much post-publication adrenaline. Let's do this thing.

Here are the examples I linked to in the story re: the Palace going on the record for other members of the royal family.

ON THE RECORD: The Queen will now longer wear fur, only fake fur on new clothes. Palace confirmed report in Angela Kelly's MUST-READ book.

(Oh yeah, and just to reiterate, unless I state otherwise, these are all stories from the same review time period: June 1, 2018 - January 1, 2020)

I saw a reference to this story in my mentions and I got so excited b/c I had it ready to go + highlighted:

ON THE RECORD: Sussexes hired Sunshine Sachs to do PR for foundation in the US.

Palace didn't say they'd now no longer represent H&M.

https://twitter.com/ellievhall/status/1375298839469514754

Here's the Epstein story I referenced in my piece:

ON THE RECORD: Defense of Prince Andrew after new photos of him w/ a young woman at Jeffrey Epstein's NYC apartment in 2010 are published 5 days after Epstein's suicide.

For the question of, "Why did XX make it in the story and not YY?"

Eventually you have to choose! Nobody wants an exhaustive list of receipts (except me, give me that every day of the week), so you choose representative examples that reflect the whole accurately/fairly

Anyways, more on and off the record examples I found that didn't make it into the story. I'm going through my folder so don't expect highlighted text anymore, just FYI:

NO OFFICIAL COMMENT: The mysterious case of Harry and Meghan's disappearing photograph

Oh this next one is my personal favorite, just in terms of, "Yes, that is a thing that a person could say on the record in response to that question."

ON THE RECORD: Prince Andrew isn't racist against Arabs because he has Arab friends:

"A palace spox said: 'HRH has undertaken a considerable amount of work in the Middle East over a period of years and has many friends from the region. He does not tolerate racism in any form."

(It literally says that.)

Question I've received a few times: "Why do you compare Meghan to Kate, different future roles (being married to AND raising future kings is a lot, and she has 2 other kids and a life), etc."

Honestly? Comparing them seems like the fairest way to get any sort of firm answer.

I'm speaking in objective terms. Yes, W&K are future King and Queen Consort, but he's not next-in-line.

They're around the same age, young children, + at least as far as the job title goes ("working royal") are concerned, the same employment. It's the fairest comparison.

(I'm going to keep posting the rest of these tomorrow!)

It is tomorrow!

Okay! Back to more examples that didn't make it into the story.

NOT because of "cherrypicking" but b/c a lot were similar, you can't use all of them and you have to chose examples that are representative of the whole. Nobody wants an endless list of receipts. Except Twitter.

I keep saying I enjoy good faith and rational discourse on here, especially with people critical of my work.

One of many reasons: @hrhcate disagreed/disagrees with my post + one criticism was that the story got a date wrong. I am grateful. It’s been updated w/ a correction

ON THE RECORD: Meghan is NOT relaunching her lifestyle blog, "The Tig."

ON THE RECORD: Meghan isn't a UK citizen yet because the process takes a long time.

(Also, 2.6k comments, fucking yikes.)

I want to highlight this @GossipCop example from Aug. 2018 b/c it SHOWS an IMPORTANT thing to remember as you read my story:

Sometimes you don't go on the record because commenting will make a story bigger if you do!

NO OFFICIAL COMMENT: If H&M are adopting an African baby

What I tried to do in my piece was use publicly-available information to test Meghan's claim that the press office didn't protect her. Only using information all of y'all, the readers, could independently verify.

This was one of first stories in 2018 that made me start keeping a closer eye on the Sussexes' media coverage b/c it was and is so weird to me that this even got written.

NO OFFICIAL COMMENT: Why Harry and Meghan announced their pregnancy during Baby Loss Awareness Week

One thing that made putting this piece together so tricky was having to navigate through attribution issues.

Tabloids will run another outlet's story w/o indicating if they've independently confirmed so trying to source stuff requires lots of clicking.

Okay! Back to examples that didn't make it into the story:

(I am serious, btw! Please ask me questions about this story if you have them, I blocked off today to be ~online~ post-publication and I'm on vacation/holiday next week.)