Toby Neal: Why do journalists cop it when scandals rise?

Frankly, my dear, I am in team apathy. That should not be confused with hostility to any of those involved. But I think there are other things going on in the world which are more important.

Along with the great majority of the population I did not watch The Interview, but have seen the news reports about it. It would be difficult not to, considering it has led news bulletins for days, and I am aware of its impact, with the media feeling emboldened to adopt those American-style calling out questions to royals, namely: “Are you racists?”

Prince William said not – “Prince William Denies Royal Family Are Racists.” If he had kept the traditional royal silence, it would have been: “Prince William Refuses To Deny Royal Family Are Racists.”

I have the sense from the coverage there is an expectation that the situation can only be resolved by a resignation, or resignations, although the finger has not yet been pointed in any particular direction. It takes time for the pack and the wider public to reach consensus on such issues.

Meghan and Harry have already resigned from the Royal Family so there’s no point in calling on them to resign again. The focus slowly turns to Buckingham Palace then.

For the statement from Buck House it seems the Queen thinks the Harry/Meghan imbroglio is a private matter to be resolved within the family rather than in the glare of the media spotlight.

The sense of disappointment with such an approach is palpable.

At times like these what is needed is a scapegoat and a sacrifice of somebody who is expendable. Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to the Gulf War. The invasion of Iraq was done on faulty intelligence that politicians and generals were only too ready to believe, as it suited them.

The military operation was launched on the false pretext that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and led to tens of thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands being displaced.

And yet the only people who lost their jobs as a result of the invasion of Iraq were journalists who were trying to tell the truth about it. None of those politicians or generals lost their jobs. Similarly, the only people to have lost their jobs in the admittedly very different circumstances of the Harry & Meghan affair are in the journalistic profession.

Most high profile casualty is Piers Morgan, who seems to lose his job on such a regular basis that he should hitherto be known as Piers ‘Job Loss’ Morgan, or PJLM for short. So deeply ingrained is this habit for moving on, it even happened when he went on a celebrity version of The Apprentice. The candidates were given some task in which Piers excelled, raising lots of money, doing brilliantly, as he wasn’t slow to point out. And yet when Sir Alan Sugar intoned “You’re Fired!” his finger was pointed at poor Piers.

It brought one of those great comic television moments, with Alastair Campbell turning to Morgan with a look of mock amazement and saying: “What – again?”

Personally I don’t watch him (although I have seen him on telly, obviously) and in the wake of his dramatic departure there has been a lot of “good riddance” reaction from people who don’t like him personally, don’t like his style which I gather can be quite abrasive, and don’t like where he is “coming from” with his views.

His comment that he wouldn’t believe Meghan if she read him the weather report, and other comments basically calling her a liar, brought 40,000 complaints.

Going quietly isn’t Morgan’s style. He has said since: “I don’t believe almost anything that comes out of her mouth.

“If I have to fall on my sword for expressing an honestly held opinion about Meghan Markle and that diatribe of bilge that she came out within that interview, so be it. I think it’s fair to say, although the woke crowd will think that they’ve cancelled me, I think they will be rather disappointed when I re-emerge.”

This is all rather rude, and putting my cards on the table, despite my apathy about the current circus, I thought Meghan was a breath of fresh air.

However, if people like Piers Morgan who reasonably question the orthodoxy, and in doing so cause upset, are expelled from their jobs, then you have a climate in which things which can and probably should legitimately be questioned in fact go unquestioned.