In December 2025, with Thomas Markle Sr recovering from a leg amputation in a hospital in the Philippines, Dan Wootton posted on X under the banner “BREAKING RIGHT NOW” that Markle’s family had told him there had been no contact between Meghan and her father since the operation. He quoted an anonymous source close to Thomas saying her PR were “full of shit”, and ended with a verdict of his own: “Another PR disaster for the nastiest Duchess in history.” The post has been viewed more than 840,000 times. Critical commentary on Meghan (and Harry) is extremely lucrative and there is a large audience hungry to hear any criticism of the couple. A cursory glance at the output of Murdoch’s TalkTV or Marshall’s GB News confirms it. Her spokesperson had said the day before that the Duchess had reached out to her father, so the source’s jibe was plainly aimed at a statement already on the record. Thomas Markle said he was confused by the reports and had received nothing, and on that narrow point the family’s account may well have been accurate: according to People, she had emailed him, and those around him said he did not use email. Five days later the spokesperson said a Daily Mail reporter stationed at his bedside had made private contact difficult, and confirmed that a letter from her was now in his hands. The suggestion that her PR were lying and “full of shit” did not stand up, and Wootton’s verdict rested on the assumption that she had not tried. He presented that assumption as settled when it was, at the very least, disputed. Ten months later the story has turned. On Thursday The Sun published claims by Thomas Markle Jr that he had found child sexual abuse images among his father’s belongings at his former home in Cebu. Thomas Markle Sr denies the allegations, calling them “sick lies”. Philippine authorities are reported to be looking into them. No charges have been brought and nothing has been proven. Wootton’s response was revealing. He called The Sun’s exclusive horrifying and potentially very significant, then added: “However, there are two sides to all stories and I believe the other side is worth reporting because The Sun hasn’t included it.” That other side, attributed to people close to Thomas Sr, suggested his son was driven by revenge after the “money tap was turned off”. Samantha Markle appeared on Wootton’s show the same day to stand by their father. Reporting a denial is responsible journalism. Thomas Markle Sr is entitled to have his side heard, as is anyone facing allegations of this gravity, and his son’s motives are a fair question. What deserves scrutiny is when Wootton finds this principle and when he mislays it. Here is what we now know. On Friday Meghan said a letter containing “troubling and disturbing allegations” against her father had been shared with her several years ago, that she had been given assurances they were being investigated, and that her decision not to allow him contact with her children had been made “to protect them”. On Saturday the Metropolitan Police confirmed that in January 2019 it received a letter containing “a number of claims about alleged offending outside the United Kingdom”, sent to its Protection Command over concerns for the Duchess’s security. The Met passed it to the Sussexes’ office “for their awareness” and did not share the details with other law enforcement agencies. It is now reviewing its handling and considering whether to refer itself to the Independent Office for Police Conduct. Accuracy matters here, so the limits need stating plainly. The Met’s statement does not say the claims were ever investigated, which sits uneasily with the assurance Meghan says she received. Her statement dated the letter to 2018; her spokesperson has since accepted the Met’s date, attributing the slip to recalling events from seven years ago without a diary. And the estrangement itself came first. The relationship broke down in the run-up to the May 2018 wedding, and her handwritten letter to her father that August asked him to stop talking to the tabloids. Even the source close to Meghan quoted in The Sun’s original story dated her break with her father to 2018. A letter received by the police in January 2019 cannot explain how the rift began, so her claim that any distance had “one reason” goes further than the public record supports. What the letter can explain is why the distance held from 2019 onwards, and why a grandfather never met two grandchildren born after it. Archie arrived in May 2019, Lilibet in 2021. Those were precisely the choices that drew the harshest commentary, and the commentators did not know what she knew. Wootton’s defenders will say he could not have known. That is true, and a fair critique should concede it. Almost nobody outside a small circle knew. What he can be held to is his certainty. Without knowing what lay behind her decisions, he delivered a judgement on her character, sourced to one side of a divided family. When her spokesperson said she had reached out, he suggested she had put the story about to steal attention from the Princess of Wales. Teun van Dijk’s ideological square is once again useful for seeing the pattern. Discourse that divides the world into Us and Them tends to emphasise Our good qualities and Their bad ones, while playing down Our bad qualities and Their good ones. For years Meghan sat firmly in Their column. Her conduct was personalised and moralised (“the nastiest Duchess in history”), her father’s camp was treated as a reliable source, and her spokesperson’s statements were read as spin. When allegations landed on the other side of the square, the register changed. Suddenly there were two sides, the accuser’s motives were in question, and caution was the order of the day. Both modes have a place in journalism. Scepticism towards a family source is as legitimate as scepticism towards an accuser. The selectivity is what gives the game away: balance arrives when it protects Us and goes missing when it might help Them. Expect the same pattern with the date discrepancy, which is already being presented by Meghan’s critics as proof of dishonesty. A gap of a few months in recalling a letter from seven years ago is the kind of error anyone might make, and she has accepted the police record. It changes nothing about the central fact the Met has now confirmed: a letter with serious claims about her father reached her office in early 2019, and the police did not share its details with any other law enforcement agency. None of this establishes that the allegations are true. That is a matter for the investigators now examining them, and Thomas Markle Sr is entitled to the presumption of innocence. What it does establish is that the story told for years, of a cold daughter abandoning a frail father, was told with great confidence and relayed to millions by people who did not have the facts. Two sides to every story is a sound principle. It would have been worth applying in December. theguardian.com/uk-news/2026…