‘If You Move in the Same Circles as the Royals, then You’ll Get Stories About Them’: Royal Correspondents, Cultural Intermediaries and Class

Abstract

This article analyses the cultural politics of the Royal Correspondent: journalists who specialise in reporting news on the British royal family. It draws on in-depth interviews with Royal Correspondents and a broader understanding of royal news production, to position Royal Correspondents as cultural intermediaries. Pierre Bourdieu described cultural intermediaries as ‘taste-makers’ with influence over the construction of, and responses to, forms of culture (1984). This cultural intermediary role is significantly classed, where it is Royal Correspondents who demonstrate the appropriate ‘capital’ (Bourdieu, 1984) who get access to the most exclusive stories. The research finds that, because of the general secrecy around royal news, Royal Correspondents rely heavily upon elite networks and contacts, a practice that produces ‘homophilic’ (Fincham, 2019) tendencies in reporting as well as a hierarchical and nepotistic structure based around those with the most exclusive access. This creates intersectional classed inequalities between those Royal Correspondents who have elite contacts and work for elite institutions, and those who do not. Such exceptionality in access to royal news means that Royal Correspondents are not necessarily disturbing the ideological bases of monarchical power. Rather, they function in service of reproducing the classed power of the monarchical institution.