The extraordinary rumor that Kate Middleton never had cancer, which went viral over the weekend after an old report resurfaced saying the princess had been afflicted by “pre-cancerous cells”, can arguably be traced back to a deliberately opaque communications policy by her and her office.
The half-transparent/half-secretive approach to Kate’s health crisis this year also resulted in one of the most disastrous episodes of news management ever seen in the royal family, when Kate disappeared from view for weeks on end, triggering a tsunami of speculation about her health and her marriage, before she reappeared in a photo that turned out to be doctored.
Kensington Palace never produced the original. Many still darkly mutter that rather than being subject to some light editing by Kate sitting up in bed with her laptop as the palace subsequently suggested, the Mother’s Day picture was in fact an out and out forgery stitched together from a selection of old photos.
Kate Middleton shared a fun family beach photo to mark Prince William’s birthday.
The Prince and Princess of Wales/X
After an outcry from global picture and news agencies which declared William and Kate’s office to no longer be a credible news source, Kate then appeared to be bounced into revealing that she had cancer in the first of two momentous videos.
But, astonishingly, that story is now being called into question after the Sky News report which said that Kate had actually been treated for “pre-cancerous cells.” The report originally dated from September but resurfaced online this weekend.
It was authored by Rhiannon Mills, senior royal editor for Sky News.
Mills and Sky are members of the so-called royal rota, a quasi-official group of royal journalists working for the British media who—while maintaining their editorial independence and frequently writing critical stories about the royals—cooperate with the palace, especially on logistics, in a broad sense. Palace staffers are often able to get simple errors made by rota journalists easily corrected.
The Daily Beast understands that reputable journalists contacted Kensington Palace last week to ask them about the Sky News report but it went unchanged until Tuesday, when it was finally amended by Sky to remove the reference to “pre-cancerous cells.”
Mills has not responded to requests for comment and the palace has told The Daily Beast that it won’t be commenting, with sources saying the phrase “pre-cancerous cells” was never used by them.
The specific formulation of the words went largely unnoticed at the time amid relief at Kate’s announcement that she was “cancer-free.”
Intriguingly, her office said at the time that the press shouldn’t use the phrase “cancer-free” although Kate did, suggesting another significant disconnect between the press office and its principal figures.
