Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan made headlines with their new Netflix documentary. But now a columnist for the British newspaper “The Sun” went too far: his article had to be removed and the newspaper even apologized to the royals.
Because within a very short time, more than 20,000 complaints were received. Writer and presenter Jeremy Clarkson described how much he “hates” Meghan in his column.
And how he dreams of that one day “when she’ll be paraded naked through the streets of every place in Britain while the crowd yell ‘Shame!’ shouts and throws clumps of excrement at them”.
Not only the readers were shocked. The text caused such a stir that 60 members of the British Parliament wrote a letter demanding an apology from Clarkson and consequences, as reported by “Newsweek” among other things.
One reason was: Duchess Meghan had received credible death threats in the past, and such columns led to an “unacceptable climate of hatred and violence”.
Speaking on Twitter, Clarkson said: “Oh my. I must have put my foot in it. In a column I wrote about Meghan I awkwardly referred to a scene in ‘Game of Thrones’ and this is it went down badly with a lot of people.” He was “horrified” that he had “caused so much pain and will be more careful in the future”.
The “Sun” also officially apologized on its website. It states: “Columnists’ opinions are their own, but as editors we recognize that with free speech comes responsibility. At The Sun, we regret the publication of this article and we sincerely apologize. The article has been removed from our website and archives.”
Sources: BBC, Newsweek, The Sun
