Truth? No, this is pure dishonesty

PEOPLE who are convinced that they are right and good are immensely dangerous. They believe that their virtue allows them to behave outside the rules of truth or justice.

This must be the explanation of the extraordinary misrepresentation of this newspaper, and of the British popular press in general, during the CBS interview with Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, screened in this country by ITV.

During the broadcast, a montage of supposed British newspaper headlines was shown. Many of them were in fact from non-UK publications.

But this was not the worst of it. The headlines, some of them not even real, were dishonestly displayed to suggest open racial bigotry aimed at the Duchess of Sussex.

The Mail on Sunday today provides a full analysis of this grotesque exercise in irresponsible and dangerous falsehood. Worst of all was a doctored headline, so distorted and cut that it suggested the very opposite of the truth. This newspaper was actually attacking a series of revolting text messages, a racist assault on Ms Markle, sent by the girlfriend of the then Ukip leader (who resigned as a result of our report).

The presentation on CBS contrived to suggest that we were expressing the very thing we were condemning.

How could CBS, once the home of the greatest and most principled of all American broadcasters, Edward R. Murrow, have sunk to such depths of distortion? How could ITV, the inheritor of decades of superb news and current affairs broadcasting, have allowed itself to be used as a conduit for such televisual effluent? No interpretation of the principle of free speech permits such behaviour. Those responsible should be identified and held to account.

The broadcasters should swiftly admit their wrongdoing, and apologise.