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“Are the media so hungry for royal news that they'd interview anyone who claimed to know something about Kate and her famous photo?” ask British trickster influencers Josh & Archie in a recent viral video on their YouTube channel. The answer seems to be a resounding yes based on the news that the duo was able to trick former Fox News media personality Tucker Carlson into thinking they edited the infamous Kate Middleton family photo sent out on British Mother's Day.
Part prank show, part commentary about the state of modern journalism, Josh Pieters and Archie Manners set out on a goal to dupe the mainstream media, insatiably hungry for updates on the bizarre Kate Middleton photoshop scandal, and appear to have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
They explain in their YouTube video entitled “We Pranked Tucker Carlson with this Photo” that they are revealing the whole thing was a prank before Tucker Carlson airs the interview on his Tucker Carlson Network (his new outlet since being fired by Fox News), so as not to create a media uproar.
Beyond giving a sense of the Kate Middleton infatuation among news outlets at the moment, Pieters and Manners' main goal appears to be showcasing the low bar for vetting interviewees on news/opinion shows like Tucker Carlson's.
They explain in the video that they wanted to see whether a claim that one of them works for Kensington Palace and the Prince and Princess of Wales would really be vetted properly. Spoiler alert: it was not.
There is even a clip of Tucker Carlson interviewing Manners (who was posing as a former Kensington Palace digital content creator named George), saying “We’ve done our best to verify that your identity is what you say it is. You’re not a fake [Alexei] Navalny or doing a prank or anything.”
The whole thing is very meta — considering it's about two pranksters trying to out-fake a news correspondent infamous for his less-than-credible journalist credentials to begin with, who's now covering a story about a family photograph admitted to be digitally altered by Kate Middleton herself, as conspiracy theories continue to swirl about the actual state of the health of Princess Catherine.
How Josh & Archie pulled it off
As Pieters explained to TIME magazine, the ruse started when he sent an email to someone in Tucker Carlson's camp on March 11, pretending to be George, the disgraced palace digital content creator who wanted to “get my side of the story out,” because “they are not telling the truth about the Princess’ health, and are now willing to fire staff in order to conceal the truth.”
A call was then arranged with someone on Carlson's team who explained the need for “George” to obtain some sort of proof of employment for his role working for William and Kate, as well as an image of the original, unaltered version of the family photo of Kate Middleton with her kids.
Pieters helped create those forgeries for Manners, including little easter eggs to monitor how closely Carlson's team were really paying attention — including the slogan of a British supermarket chain in Latin on the Kensington Palace emblem, and an absurd stipulation in the “letter of engagement” which stated that if the Kensington Palace employee failed their probationary period “the company retains the right to amputate 1 (1) limb of their choosing.”
Incredibly, Josh & Archie made it past those hurdles, and Manners found himself being interviewed from a TV studio in Westminster, London on March 12, via video conference with Carlson himself. Manners brought along a hidden camera to record the experience.
In the interview, Manners (as George) told Carlson that the editing job was poor because it was “too big to do” and claimed the photo wasn't taken by Prince William on Mother's Day, but rather by Kate's maternal uncle, Gary Goldsmith, around Christmas (complete with another doctored, holiday-themed Christmas version of the family photo as “proof”).
After the interview was complete, Carlson is heard telling Manners, “That was great and it was really interesting too.”
Then, when told of Carlson's intent to air the interview “early next week” Pieters and Manners seemed to get cold feet about the staged royal exposé, so they revealed to their online followers that the whole thing was staged.
As Pieters explained to Time, “I think it is a silly enough thing that we think the palace would probably see the funny side of it.”
He continued, “But as I said, that’s the reason we didn’t want the interview to go out, to not have this ripple effect of harm going out or more pressure on the Princess.”
According to Time, Pieters further elaborated that his goal in making the video was to “highlight quick judgments in today’s online world and to test whether news organizations are doing appropriate vetting.”
“We all see things very quickly and are quick to react to things and we have instant access to all kinds of information, and I'm not sure we question enough how verified and validated that information is,” Pieters stressed.
Leave it to a pair of young YouTube influencers like Josh & Archie to teach journalistic ethics to an established former Fox News host like Tucker Carlson, all while bringing the media hoopla surrounding the current royal family scandal with Kate Middleton to a fever pitch.
