The cover of this week’s In Touch is really something to be marveled at, displaying a photo of the Duchess of Sussex writing in a journal under the headline, “Meghan’s Nightmare: Royal Diary Leaked!” The cover suggests that if you pay for the magazine and look inside you’ll find actual excerpts from Markle’s supposed diary detailing everything from “first dates with Harry, fights with the queen,” and even, allegedly, information about Markle “selling Diana’s dresses to pay bills.”
Of course, if you actually fall for it and look inside you’ll find absolutely no real excerpts or evidence that such a diary even exists. All the tabloid alleges is that Markle has “shared with some of her friends” that she kept a diary in 2017 and 2018, which is itself a totally unsubstantiated claim. The diary supposedly even contains Markle’s “step-by-step plan to leave the royal family.”
The tabloid also provides some truly laughable “quotes” from the supposed diary, including lines like “Harry loves me, but do I love him?!?” and “Kate’s silence is so scary when it’s directed at you. At least Beatrice is nice to me.” Yes, they do sound like they were written by a fourteen-year-old, and no, they’re not real: as the tabloid notes in tiny font at the bottom of the page, the quotes are only “renderings of what might be in the diary.”
After taking a good five minutes to laugh nonstop at those “diary entries,” we at Gossip Cop can explain what’s going on here. First of all, there’s the painfully obvious bait-and-switch on the cover which is only designed to hold your attention for as long as it takes you to buy a copy. You’ll know you’ve been duped as soon as you read the actual article.
And second, the tabloid has likely stolen the idea for this story from the Daily Mail, which published an article two weeks ago alleging that Markle would be publishing a “kiss-and-tell-all” book based on a diary she supposedly kept a couple years back. Vanity Fair, a magazine that practices actual journalism, dismissed the claim, quoting a friend of Markle who told the outlet, “the Meghan stories seem to get more far-fetched by the day” and added that they weren’t aware Markle kept a diary.
You might recall that the Daily Mail is one of the four British tabloids the Sussexes have officially cut off communication with, on the grounds that those outlets are “clickbait and distortion,” so it’s not exactly a surprise to see the Mail continually attempting to smear Markle’s name. It’s entirely possible Markle did log her days in the UK in some form or other, but as to the contents all these tabloids can do is make wild guesses at this point.
Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s photoshopped images have frequently graced the covers of In Touch in equally insulting and deceptive claims. Just a couple weeks ago, Gossip Cop busted the outlet for another clickbait cover story that claimed Markle was being forced to testify in her lawsuit against a British tabloid. Back in February, the publication insisted the Duke and Duchess were “already $6 million in debt.” The lesson is clear here: before you buy a magazine based on its cover story, maybe just double check the article within to make sure you know what you’re getting.