King Charles and Charles Spencer: Name the Move

0:09Now, as we start this out, the reason why I want to focus on this, and it does not matter if you are a royal family watcher or not, it doesn't matter. I am looking at the moves. I am always intrigued by the PR moves that we see. And PR moves don't have to be only professional moves. We see these in our lives all the time because what's happening in the royal family, Buckingham Palace says they do not comment on books yet. We have a comment on a book. So this is Charles Spencer. This is Diana's Princess Diana's younger brother who wrote that after Diana died, Charles sounded, quote, giddily elated on the phone.

0:53So one piece of this entire story that I want you to hang on to is that this story comes from memories or really not the whole book, but the book really is about memories. It's not about anything now. It's about memories. And if you're watching the interviews of Charles Spencer recently, and there's been a lot, certainly in the UK, but many interviews here, CBS Sunday Morning, Good Morning America. He gives a very good interview. And one of the reasons why he's so good, he's very measured when he speaks. You know, he calls himself a historian. He's written books. He knows how to lay out his evidence.

1:35But all of this is from 1997, really, where we're getting all the talking points from it. But the statement is issued in 2026. So we have the collision between a very different media environment and one we have right now. Now, entering into this, why this story intrigued me is, well, of course, it's the royal family. And whenever they're making news, they're making news. And we in this community follow news. We also follow the moves that are picked up in the news. Now, backdrop, it's late September. And late September means, and I've said this, you've heard me talk about this a lot, is when stories like this pop up.

2:18That's why September is always busy. This is now becoming the busiest time of year for me. And the reason why is stories are being written right now. Long form stories are being written right now. You know, a lot of my clients are worried about things that are coming out right now. This book is launched in September for a reason. It's the recycle this time of year. It's that renewal in September. People are back to school. Habits are changing. And I started watching or re-watching Harry and Meghan on Netflix. Netflix wisely has their documentary on Netflix. And I finished it last night. Watching that documentary as a backdrop for what's happened right now is fascinating.

3:04not to mention watching it, that Harry and Meghan are back in the UK. Charles Spencer has this book, Buckingham Palace is commenting. We're in a completely different era now. This is why I find this interesting. So let's look at the moves. I'm not going to dig up the whole royal history of it all. Let's just look at what's happening in the press. And let's look at what's happening from the news perspective. So what we're going to do is I'm going to dive in to everything that I found. Let's look at what the intent of this book actually is. Now, let's look at it first in the reputation aspect of it.

3:44So the royal family always gets the bump. You know, they really do. After watching the Harry and Meghan documentary on Netflix, I have to be honest, I shifted my thinking a little after watching it. And it's a lot easier to do when you have now history behind it. So if you want to look at the industry of reputation, look at the royal family because they are fluid reputation in real time. So the first time that I watched the documentary, I was caught up in the why. Like, why leave at that time? Why go to Vancouver? Why blow everything up? And certainly they laid out the argument for why they left.

4:27And the tabloid aspect in the UK was a big part of it. But also how the palace, and at that time, the queen was alive. So we have Buckingham Palace with Queen Elizabeth and Clarence House and Kensington Palace. But Harry and Meghan laying out this narrative, really, that it wasn't just the tabloids and it wasn't just social media and hate accounts. Like they were showing this graphic how the majority of the hate that they were receiving online was coming from a very minute group of social media followers. And the where I had more appreciation the second time watching it was the racial aspect on it.

5:06I mean, definitely, it's always been there. But I have a deeper appreciation for what Megan was going through with that aspect. And also with the Commonwealth and how they were looking at it. Like, what an opportunity, you know, to really embrace Meghan, which means embracing the Commonwealth. But Harry and Meghan laying out the machinations of the palace. And so that's why this story with the Earl, Charles Spencer, bringing this book back in, brings this whole story back in the fold. But he's hearkening back to an even earlier time than Harry and Meghan. He is also laying out the argument that, you know, for Harry and the death of his mother, Charles Spencer's sister, really shaped what a lot of what Harry is doing right now.

5:50So there's that aspect as well. A hundred percent never explain, never complain. Not not originating from the royal family, but adopted by the royal family. But here we are in 2026. They're explaining, aren't they? We've changed from that. Now, you know, moving forward, if you were looking at the interviews of Charles Spencer, what's interesting, he's talking more about Diana as a person, laid out very interesting pieces that come out in this book. And just this comparison of Meghan being like Diana was so much in that documentary. Now we're bringing Diana back in the fold. and with all of this, with Harry and Meghan back in the UK, it's, and that's why watching the Harry and Meghan documentary, I mean, they brought me along on hours and hours and hours of this footage, like all the viewers.

6:38And in the end, you know, you went back, you went back there. But here's my, my, my takeaway, just as this will frame as we move forward. And I say this in my PR work, but I also say this to my kids all the time. Everyone has their zone of genius, if you will. It's just this magic spot where everything comes together. And when we look at it from a private sense, like when I talk to my twins, they're both journalism majors. It's like, take where your talent meets your interests and your skills, and that's like your zone of genius. And then you just kind of take off from there. You know, having one twin who's very good, and diligent with the writing, and the other one is really good with broadcast and audio, like that.

7:22Now, if we were to transfer that to the internet, that's where the internet comes in and tells you where your talent and desire kind of mix. So if we take Diana, she existed at a time before the internet. And can you imagine what Diana would be right now in the age of the internet? I think she had more of her redemption in the internet. More people, certainly there would have been the trolls, you know, coming at her, you know, from the royalist point of view. But I think she would have just absolutely gleamed on the internet. And she would have been able to see how people really felt about her in public and how even in the U.S.

8:00I mean, people were obsessed with her. And then you take Meghan Markle, like her zone of genius is being an activist, being an influencer and being outspoken. But in the royal family and in this documentary, she said everything in the royal family is small and contained. And that's what we see in this documentary. So that's why there's no surprise. There's a big, you know, that this is coming up in the news. And I'm going to show you the muckrack numbers relating to the royal family and Charles Spencer right now. So if we have a royal family that confines with rules and being restrained and you counter that with personas of women who are looking for their own agency.

8:45Meghan is a lot like Diana. Diana was supposed to be confined and small, but she was big. She was beautiful. She was a star. And if we follow these books and a lot of the narratives out there, that was a problem for the palace. And Meghan Markle's doing it at a much different time because of social media. In every PR look that I give, whether it's a news story that I'm covering or with my clients, when they're telling me the story of what happened, I'm always listening to words, looking at expressions, and trying to figure out intent. Because intent tells you why people do what they do. And it makes it easier to read between the lines.

9:29Now, if you look at intent of why Spencer wrote the book. He said the aim of the book is to, quote, tell the truth about Diana from her brother's perspective, end quote, just like the eulogy. And he said this in interviews. It's really an extension of his blistering attack, you know, from the pulpit. And in the book, he recounts how when they asked him during the rehearsal for him to rehearse the eulogy, he said, oh, look at me, you know, I forgot my notes. So with the 30th anniversary of Diana's death coming, he wrote that he was going to tell things how he remembers them and lays them down for good once and for all.

10:07That's intent. Intent is legacy. A lot of these crises that we see out there, sometimes I call them the intent is like wiki, you know, Wikipedia. What's the legacy? What do they want the last word to be on them? So Earl Spencer is doing what Earl Spencer does. He speaks about Diana's legacy. That's how people know him. He is resurrecting someone people of a certain age absolutely miss. Younger generations could still be fascinated by her, but the people who were alive in the 90s at the time when she was at her apex, many of them miss her. So there's obviously, you know, there's usually multiple reasons why people do things and they're weighted differently.

10:49And many of them can be true at once. But if you look at a brother at this time, it feels like he wants to have his sister have a voice again because the palace is still speaking. King Charles is now still speaking. So the book dropping the same time that Harry and Meghan are back in the UK is quite interesting. And I think that plays a lot with it. Now let's look at the dates. September 16th, the first excerpts of the book runs with Spencer's claims that Charles sounded, quote, giddily elated on a phone call. The palace issues a statement the same day. September 18th, Spencer doubles down. He tells the BBC, quote, I can tell you here and now those are exactly the words he said, end quote.

11:40As for proof, he says he told friends and family at the time because, quote, it was so monstrous, end quote. That's his account, and nobody has independently backed up that account. September 21st, he escalates. He's on Good Morning America, and he says, quote, well, it's not every day you're gaslit by a king, end quote. He calls the statement not only condescending, but not straight and says it doesn't say he didn't say it either. And then on September 22nd, the book comes out. Piers Morgan threatens to sue and Spencer apologizes for one error that he made about Piers Morgan. Now let's talk about this statement.

12:31So this is from the royal family, quote, while we do not comment on books as a matter of principle, his majesty is mindful that the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgment, and color memory in ways others do not recognize, even many years after such a loss. End quote. There's a lot there. There is a lot there. So let's dig in. I found three tells in 42 words. Here they are. One, the first clause claims the rule and the same sentence breaks it. Two, every word doing the damage is a kind one. Mindful, pain, such a loss. The compassion is the delivery system. And three, there is no denial.

13:25It never says he didn't do it. This is what I mean. While we do not comment on books as a matter of principle, already right there, we get a slight ding. A book is beneath us. We don't talk about books, which in fairness, there have been so many books about the royal family, various members of the royal family going way, way, way, way, way back. Even centuries, there are books about it. But books about this nature and about Princess Diana and about the actual king, all of a sudden, they're right there. His Majesty is mindful that the pain of fraternal grief, fraternal grief is where the misses, one of the many misses here, can cloud reason, affect judgment, and color memories in ways others do not recognize.

14:21So when Charles Spencer is saying, it's not every day you get gaslit by the king, that right there, that's gaslighting. That's the definition of gaslighting. Gaslighting is certainly one of these internet-friendly words that everyone throws around, but a lot of people technically don't know what it means. Gaslighting isn't just saying negative things or saying things that aren't necessarily true. It is the act of saying or writing, communicating that the other person is crazy. The other person isn't just wrong. They're wrong for psychological reasons. That goes back to the movie Gaslight. That's really what it means.

15:03It's a manipulation. This statement is gaslighting Charles Spencer. Gaslighting in a statement in my world is verboten. You don't do this. This is why, this is one of the many reasons why I don't think this is a great statement. To say in ways others do not recognize, it's saying, okay, Charles, Spencer, it's you. It's on you. It's not us and it's nobody else. It's just you. You're the brother. You're the only brother. That's why you're the one who's the problem here. Even many years after such a loss. And again, showing the passage of time. Here is where the reason, you know, again, it is straight up gaslighting.

15:44He's saying Charles Spencer is wrong because of grief. Gaslighting, bottom line here, is never the right response ever. And when you dismiss Charles Spencer, who else are you dismissing? Diana. You're dismissing Diana as well. Now, It's also a move, okay? And here's the move. As many of you know, I have been writing my field guide. I am working towards a book where I am putting all of these moves down and they all exist in these crisis laws. So all the work that I do now is going, it is now documented into my doctrine. And every move has a name. And the reason for naming the moves is so you can spot them.

16:28That's the point of it. Not just to spot it if you are a communication strategist, but to spot it in life. Because this is playing out in a reputation on the royal stage. But believe me, parents gaslight their kids. It happens. It happens all the time. I'm sure many people have instances where it happens. So let's call this, if we were to visualize it, pat on the head. King Charles is patting Charles Spencer on the head. You answer an accusation by going after the person's memory instead of denying the claim. And you do it with the language of sympathy like, oh, you poor thing. You're just remembering it all wrong.

17:11You were upset. Spencer called it exactly what it is. It's condescending. That's exactly what this statement is. And here's how you spot it. Read it for a denial. There isn't one. Then count the kind words doing unkind work. Think of your personal life. When has someone denied doing something wrong that they so clearly did and then made you the problem? It doesn't work with you either, right? Because people can feel that pat on the head, you know, and because King Charles is the king and he's patting down to an earl. This is where a powerful person in a relationship, even a personal relationship, a boss, a parent, that power dynamic is what adds into this pat on the head gaslighting.

18:02People can feel the pat on the head. And Charles Spencer has every right to be a grieving brother, describing the day his sister died. And that's the reason why this statement doesn't work. Now, could they say nothing? Silence is an option. It's not one that I use often. You can use silence strategically where you might not put out a statement or something that gives you an on-the-record opportunity, but you can still do things to signal that you've heard it and now you're sending maybe more of a visual message. Now, all of this is coming from a private phone call in 1997. The palace could say nothing and let it land on its own.

18:55And I did think about that, too. Like, what would it have looked like if the palace said nothing on, you know, on this matter? But, you know, again, just the rule, and it's really more than a rule. It's kind of like a law in PR crisis management. Silence gets filled. And especially in this environment now, and you have Harry and Meghan there, and that narrative is still a little gray. how the family treated Harry and now how the family or King Charles treated Harry and now how King Charles is treating Charles Spencer, the Earl. It mirrors it. That's why they had to say something. Going unanswered on social media would be the equivalent of no comment and no comment is a response.

19:42So silence always gets filled with the public's response and you lose your chance to reclaim your reputation. If there are still questions out there you want an answer to your own question. Maybe it's a statement. Maybe it's a video. Maybe it's something a little more coded. Just something people can point to and say, this is a response. It could have been an opportunity where Charles ignores the book, but then makes a move towards Harry. That would have been a power move. That would have been an incredible power move to do that. But these are all Molly playbook things. I'm always looking at those angles, but they're not going to do that.

20:22Now, the palace spent a century building a no public voice on purpose. When you state that we don't comment on these matters, and then all of a sudden you finally use one and it matches who people said you were when the criticism happened, you're showing us who you are, who you actually are. So this leads into where what I would do if the palace called me, which, of course, they're not going to do that. But if this were my job, this is what I would do. But think about this. This is the point where the mask is slipping. I want to ask you, especially those of you alive in 1997, and you remember the frenetic tabloid time, you remember how the public felt about Diana at that time.

21:13And if you remember the negativity towards the palace, certainly King Charles going down to claim Diana's body. I remember that being a moment like, oh, okay, we're showing compassion there. That's a father going to claim the remains of his son's mother. And I remember that time where that was a time to do that. That was a good move there. But the family was in Balmoral. And when they were there, they were not saying anything. If you remember, they were in Scotland. And the queen said nothing at that time. So this experiment has already been run back in 1997. 1997. So Diana died on August 31st, 1997.

22:04The family stayed there at Balmoral for five days. Could you imagine five days in social media days? That would be like 10 days now. The criticism was building and it was, and think back, like we did not have at that time social media. We did not have a way to really chart how the public was feeling. We only had the news. We had broadcast news. We had cable news. We had CNN. That was our primary cable news channel of the time. And we had tabloid news. So it is incredible if you think about it. And we had U.S. tabloid and we had U.K. tabloid. If you think about it, if you all remember, if you were there, that negative criticism coming from the public.

22:55Where did that come from? Well, news stories and signs and interviews. I mean, it was everywhere. On September 5th, 1997, the flag went to half staff over Buckingham Palace. And then the queen, if you believe the crown and all the movies out there, reluctantly came back to London. But she did speak about Diana personally live. So what fixed it in 1997 was visible, personal grief. That fixed it. 2026, it's absent. Isn't that interesting now? See the two PR machines at play, and they're in direct opposition of each other. Charles Spencer tells the story on the train after the funeral. He was told the queen was offering to restore Diana's titles.

23:46And he said, quote, that's very kind of the queen, of course. But what's the point Now, I mean, Diana's dead. Too little, too late. And that is the pattern, certainly. I mean, that is the royal family pattern. It's reacting to the public because the royal family needs the public's acceptance there. Now, if we move on to the press piece of it, Never Complain, Never Explain is something that the Queen Mother adopted. It became the Queen Elizabeth way. Silence was a lot easier when the press drove sentiment. Now social media drives public sentiment. It is what drives my work. Anyone who hires me or any story that we break down, which we're going to look in a moment on this story, it's public sentiment.

24:37The news does not drive the news anymore. People behind the scenes of the crisis itself, lawyers, fixers, they don't drive the news. They try, but they don't drive the news anymore. You drive, the public drives the news. People like me, commentators, drive the news cycle. So silence was a lot easier when the press drove sentiment. And also with the Royal Rota system, which is very similar or identical to a press pool, to a presidential press pool. I will come back to that as well. What was so painful for Diana, which is what Charles Spencer is talking about in interviews now, was the media. And this was sad when I heard him say this on an interview.

25:19I think it was the GMA interview. When Diana died, she didn't know how much people liked her and adored her. She was so consumed by the negative press and tabloid press that she lived and died at a time when she thought she was not beloved. Had she had social media there, she probably would have seen more of why she was an icon, why people really saw the story for what it was. But she didn't have that. It was a different time, wasn't it, for any of us who worked in media in the 90s? It was such a different time back then. The media had so much more power. I mean, they certainly do now as well.

26:00But in terms of driving stories, They really don't. It's the public. So the royal rota is a machine. And back then it was really a machine. You can control the narrative and quash stories easily. Certain principles within the royal family could could kill a story and put their story in or kill a story about them and insert another story, which was a whole one of the episodes of the Harry and Meghan documentary lays this out plainly. I mean, Harry lays this out plainly. When they were negotiating what would happen with Harry and Meghan after they left the UK, the palace insisted that they put everything in writing and then it would eventually leak.

26:46So they were losing faith and this very important word, trust, in the entire situation. And when you lose trust in the entity you're dealing with, that's when you make decisions like that. And I thought that's the reason why they left. They didn't feel like they could trust anyone. But now Charles Spencer has a publisher. He has a press tour. Harry and Meghan have built their own channels. So I'd say it's a little wobbly, you know, Harry and Meghan, their own channels because they have their documentary. They no longer have the podcast. We know, I think Meghan had two iterations of a podcast. they don't have the opportunity of a soapbox like they did in the past.

27:34But what they do have is they do have interest. And I've read in different places that that played into the reason why they wanted to go back. Because in the U.S., and I think this bears out, is no one was that interested anymore in them. They're just not newsmakers, like living out there in Montecito. But now back in the U.K., they're going to be back in the press almost every day. And that gives them, you know, the relevance that perhaps they were searching for. And there could be other reasons there to certainly reconnecting with family, kids, education, whatever, you know, whatever it is. But staying silent, serve the royal family for a very, very long time, but not anymore.

28:18It does not serve them well. And that's why I think we have it in the case of this statement. It doesn't serve them well. Now, I had mentioned the, you know, the Royal Rota. So now we have the press figuring something out about President Trump the same week that this is happening. So I had mentioned earlier in the beginning, I talk about this zone of genius, if you will, where people really find that secret spot, that sweet spot where everything that makes them who they are, like their id, their ethos, their energy, everything about them, they just kind of come to light. I've said this for as long as I've been following Meghan Markle.

29:00Meghan Markle during the Tig years, when she was on Suits, that's who she is. That's who she is. And that's where she came to life, right? She likes things. She likes glamour. She's beautiful. She really is the definition of an influencer in a good way. She created an economy there for her. She could have been, you know, like a typical celebrity, but instead it was causes and the TIG. Going into the royal family removed all that from her. She didn't have that anymore, which is the reason why I think she struggled a bit. That's why I think not a bit, like a lot. You know, she did have momentum there.

29:38The momentum stopped. Now compare another zone of genius. If we like, okay, another zone where someone's sweet spot. If you look at President Trump, his is capturing press, okay? Go back. 90s press. So think Pete Diana, Pete Tabloid, Pete Trump. That was Pete Kim back then, if you think New York Post. Roy Cohn, who taught him, I'm going to make, how to make a headline. That's what Trump knows. He knows how to make a headline. He was also the first president to capture social media. President Obama was the first to capture how to fundraise on social media. President Trump, the first to understand how to mobilize on social media, how to grow a base.

30:24That's the Trump zone of genius. And that's where I would argue the only zone of genius that he has. But he learned the headlines piece from Roy Cohn. He, this last week of the White House, pulling CNN from the TV pool and MSNOW and banning Politico. So that's the big story. What did the press do? Brilliant. And a little late, by the way, as well. They pulled him. They stopped covering him. Like if you see him at that ribbon cutting with no sound and then the White House put a YouTube feed that was yards away, like 100 yards away, you couldn't hear anything. It was like someone standing there with a phone.

31:04You pull that source, that piece that is his sweet spot, and it also so desperate, it feeds his ego. He needs that stream. He needs the admiration. You know, that fuels that admiration. You pull the source and you watch him sputter. Now he's, what did he immediately promote? Trump TV after that. So Trump is the opposite of the palace. Trump wants to speak. He wants to be on the record. He wants to control the narrative constantly. But look what happens when you take someone's voice, especially when they desperately need it. You're the extreme of both the palace and Trump. And even yesterday in the news, what was the news story about Trump?

31:50It was Caitlin Collins, CNN, when he was talking about the U.N. And what did he say? What was the clip that everyone had to hear? It was telling Caitlin Collins, Collins, you don't belong here. What are you doing here? Well, her being there is very different than the press pool, but you can see how things fall apart. So Trump right now is the opposite of the palace and neither work. So that's why it's a little like Meghan moving back to England. When you own your own brand and you own your own reputation and when you start making concessions, you know, then things get a little off and they start to sputter.

32:29So that's why creators with high trust, like later on, I'm doing this training for creators in the medical field. When you have high trust and credibility, where they struggle is when they want to make money. So when you have that oppositional force coming together, that's when things sputter. You see? Now, back to the book and Charles Spencer and the press here. So Piers Morgan, remember him? He was someone who had a lot of relevance, especially around Diana's era and also on The Apprentice. So Piers Morgan, same type of person who I think needs that adulation. Maybe my UK people can correct me on this one, but he seems, even though he's on the air, he doesn't have the relevance that he used to have.

33:21So it's no surprise he's jumping in on a 97 story. So he said that Spencer says he called the Fleet Street editors and asked them to stay home from the funeral and that Morgan snarled and hung up. And the book also tied Morgan to the 1993 photos of Diana exercising. And Morgan didn't become editor of The Mirror until 1995. And so Charles Spencer did have to apologize for that. And he said this through a representative quote, as an historian, accuracy is important to Earl Spencer. He therefore wishes to clarify that his assumption was incorrect. Earl Spencer apologizes to Mr. Morgan for this error.

34:03Now, the error gets fixed in the second edition of the book, but he did not take back one word about King Charles. And he still stands by that funeral call. His side says that Morgan was surly and annoyed and Morgan says he was very, very respectful. Okay. And it's actually surprising to not get that fact check right about where Morgan worked at that time or what his role was at the time. So as a historian, that is a little bit surprising there in terms of the fact checked on that. But Morgan, of course, there's no surprise Piers Morgan is saying that the apology isn't enough. He wants the material removed, damage is paid to the King's Trust and the book pulled if necessary.

34:48And what that is, is just a threat. It's not a filing. But when we see the bluster from lawyers and we see bluster from legal, definitely a narrative that I watched in Harry and Meghan in their Netflix documentary. Another whole episode was about the legal back and forth. Legal always comes in to PR. when there's usually a mess because people listen to lawyers first. They oftentimes get statements redlined by lawyers and they use it as the growl. They use it as the threat, the threat of legal action against you. Using a cease and desist. Anyone who works with me knows this. When they talk about cease and desist, I always say, we are going to cease and desist the conversation about cease and desist because they don't mean anything.

35:39They're nothing. And you give a cease and desist to anyone online, they're going to tell you that they have it and that they're completely dismissing it. I'm always telling people not to use it because people want to hide behind legal maneuvers. But I say, if you didn't do anything, you don't need a lawyer to go on attack. And lawyers on attack never works. Now, granted, nobody likes to be called something they're not online. Nobody does. But when you bring a lawyer in to intimidate, sometimes people will cower, But many times when they know they haven't done anything wrong, they don't cower there.

36:13So I see the Piers Morgan piece. He'll keep barking and growling and growling because it keeps him in the news, which is where he loves it. So now where we are right now, where everything stands, as of this morning, Wednesday, September 23rd, there's no news statement from the palace. The coverage still points back to that grief line. It's not really about Piers Morgan. It's about what King Charles said on the phone or Prince Charles at the time. Earl Spencer has not withdrawn anything and nobody knows what was actually said on the call. You know, moving the story is no longer about the king's conduct.

36:48They want to make it whether Earl Spencer is a reliable narrator. So that's where Piers Morgan is saying that he's not. But the palace just having that one statement here is where it gets worrisome for them. And I want to show you the numbers now. You know, did this statement work? Well, you tell me what you think. I'm going to show you if you can see all these. You can see the point here, maybe not the actual numbers, but we ran this on King Charles and Charles Spencer, Earl Spencer. So the run is of this week, 920 to 923. So that's Monday to Wednesday. It pulled 39, over 3 ,900 articles. The average UVM, which is unique visitors per month across all articles, 21.2 million.

37:42The total UVM, total unique visitors per month across all articles, 83.7 billion. This is where reputation is made and lost. Okay, let's go here, the one that you can see. The sentiment of the stories, that red, negative. You can see right there, 75 % of the stories are negative. And the topic breakdown, they fall under human interest. When you see the human interest pie here, which is at 73%, it almost looks identical to negative. human interest is popular articles, news articles, entertainment articles, social media chatter. Now, this sentiment piece, which is important to highlight here, it doesn't mean necessarily that it's negative to King Charles or negative to Charles Spencer.

38:39It just means the story is a negative story. And there's a lot of negativity there, which if you were to pull out and pull at the threads, if we look at the word cloud here about this story, right in the middle is Diana. With Diana being right in the middle of this story, and we have Charles Earl Spencer at the top, Charles Spencer, you look at how big everything is there, you can glean that a lot of that sentiment is towards Diana. And Diana is the sister of the Earl. And where did some of the other stories here? Harry, Prince, Death, Swansong, Funeral Procession, Buckingham Palace. And then the sentiment over time on Monday, it was you see it was higher in the negativity, lower positive on the 21st.

39:39There were more positive stories there. But then over the past two days is the negative piece of it as well coming in. So with that, you can look at the at the numbers there that show you who I think is taking the bigger hit on this is the royal family. specifically King Charles, which is not what he is looking for. And here's where it really, where it all ties into is this. And if you were to ask, you know, what, what would I have done differently? Like if I were on the call and if I were doing this, let's just say like, if I were in the room, what would I be doing? You want to, uh, the statement that I would have made at one, It's very difficult to comment on a private phone call during such a tragic, grief-stricken time.

40:28Grief colors memory. It certainly does. And it certainly affects judgment. And both of the things cited in this statement could have absolutely been true. I always fall back to this term, reasonable. A reasonable person. And when I mean reasonable, it's just someone who can look at things both ways. they can look at all the information, the landscape, and determine their opinion on it, would understand that maybe Charles could have said something off the cuff. Think about times of grief when people trying to say the right thing and end up saying the wrong thing. It's a very universal thing. People do it all the time.

41:08So that's why you want your statement to be as close to what anybody would do or close to what a reasonable person would do. A reasonable person would say something off the cuff, speaking to another grief-stricken person. And especially if you were the ex-husband and you're Prince Charles, who people know was raised a certain, there's like a coldness, trollishness nature to Prince Charles, which is understandable on how he was raised. And we certainly have heard that play out with Harry and his narrative. So it would be understandable that he would say something off the cuff like that and maybe sideways.

41:46It is his former wife. It doesn't matter if he's a king or a CEO. Princess Diana is still the mother of your children. He's still your son's uncle. So the line here, the lesson here is find the uncle. The palace wrote this statement for Prince Charles, but showing compassion for a grieving brother may feel risky. It maybe looks like you're accepting fault, but it would have diffused the entire book. Like if Prince Charles really wanted to get after Charles Spencer and say, I don't want this book to be reliable. And also with the Piers Morgan revelation, had he done this take, it could have fed into it easily.

42:27That is the power move, especially with Harry coming back. Even putting the word uncle in a statement would have been that soft recognition of William and Harry together. Now, it's easy to paint him as the ex-brother-in-law. It's harder to paint him as the uncle. But that's more important. If you don't, you know, where the opposition comes in, it's a king versus his ex-wife's brother. But the statement could have been written about an uncle. And it could have been their shared grief. You know, then the statement could have said that grief, take out fraternal grief. Grief affects memories, can color memory of what was said, meaning it could have happened to both of them, but also kind of would have explained if Charles would have said something off the cuff.

43:18Because everyone knows how Charles treated Diana. Nobody would be shocked to hear that he said something like that. So that is the takeaway. way. People in a crisis are so quick to defend, defend, defend. And when you're under attack, it is understandable. I know it. But the power move as someone who does this and helps people through these things is to reframe yourself. And you do that by reframing the crisis. The move is find the uncle. If you find the uncle, you find your way out. And that's why you need trusted people in your room. A lawyer is always going to point you to lawsuits. That's why there's always lawyers in the room.

43:56Lawyers focus on acts. Who said what? They focus on the anger. Nobody in that palace room drafting that statement was sitting in Diana's chair or representing Diana. No one. The reasonable people, they weren't there or they weren't speaking up or they weren't allowed to. You don't hear them, but you can find them. If you read news stories where reporters interview real people, you will look at press sentiment. And I showed you the numbers here now. You could see that. If I were in that palace room, I would say this is the story right now. This is the negative sentiment. But like if you don't have a media dashboard like a muckrack or something like that, you have no dashboard telling you sentiment, then the guidance is the golden rule.

44:44If you anything you put out into this world comes back into your own. I've learned that at a young age. My grandmother always said that to me based off of a poem, The Golden Rule. Put onto others and it will come back into yourself. Prince Charles missed it. Instead of painting him the bitter former brother-in-law, he should have painted him as the uncle. Everyone would have understood it and then people would have put the family together. One statement where you're writing a statement about an uncle instead of a former possibly bitter brother-in-law would have done so much good. It really would have.

45:19And that's all that we can do here. I don't work for the palace and I don't think any of us do on this call, but we can certainly learn a lesson. So if you're someone who writes statements for a living, if you're someone in the room and you're never heard in that room and you want to be heard in the room, what you want to say is find the uncle. Find the uncle is essentially find the empathy. And if you find the empathy, you'll get through. All right, everyone, I want to thank you so much for joining me this week on the podcast. All right, everyone, thanks so much for joining me this week. Bye for now.