There’s been precious little pushback on Buckingham Palace hiring a member of the royal rota to be one of their new senior communications officers. In a Friday news dump, the palace announced that Sky News’ royal reporter Rhiannon Mills would be working under Tobyn Andreae as director of palace communications. Andreae famously came from the British media as well – he was a Daily Mail editor, plucked out of the tabloid hack world to run comms for King Charles and Queen Camilla. As I said, there’s been little pushback or criticism of Mills’ lateral move – it’s a very “who gonna check me boo?” thing. For royal reporters to question it or criticize it would mean admitting that the royal rota already works for the palace and that they’re already stenographers and propagandists for the royal agenda. Well, at least Tom Sykes – who was kicked out of the rota WhatsApp – is trying to talk about the sticky optics of it all. An excerpt from his latest column:

[Rhiannon Mills’] appointment is made still more eye-catching by the fact that Mills’ partner, Andrew Parsons, already works as a photographer for the Prince and Princess of Wales. One half of a couple was covering the royals for an independent news organization while the other half was being paid by the royals themselves. That this arrangement apparently raised no red flags at Sky News—or at Buckingham Palace—tells you something about the culture of cozy co-dependency that has long defined the relationship between the monarchy and its media retinue.

Mills, I am told, was placed on gardening leave by Sky News immediately upon the announcement. But appointments of this seniority—deputy to Tobyn Andreae, the palace’s director of communications—do not materialize overnight. The interview process, background checks, and negotiations will have been going on for weeks, more likely months.

During that period, Mills was still filing reports on the royal family for Sky News. She was still appearing on air, analyzing the monarchy’s actions and decisions, presenting herself to millions of viewers as an independent journalist. Were there stories she softened? Questions she didn’t ask? Access she protected?

PR and branding expert Nick Ede told The Daily Beast: “I’m sure there will have been a long period of interviews and meetings prior to her appointment—it doesn’t happen overnight. Such an important position will have taken a lot of people to decide on the role and who was best for it. It’s hard to know if she was reporting and interviewing for the role at the same time, but in many job roles when someone goes ‘in house’ there can be grey areas, and this certainly is one of those.”

Mark Borkowski, the veteran PR guru and crisis communications specialist, took a more sanguine view. “The whole royal reporting scene is a bit of a village,” Borkowski told The Daily Beast. “It is not uncommon for journalists to cross over to the other side. It never breaks the system. It just exposes it.” Borkowski described the appointment as a function of the monarchy’s evolution into a modern media operation. “The monarch is no longer just an institution, it is a content engine, operating in a brutally competitive attention market,” he said. “They see somebody who is very good and they want them on their side, not outside the tent pissing in.”

Graham Smith, the CEO of Republic, the anti-monarchy campaign group, was considerably less forgiving. For Smith, the Mills appointment is not an isolated event but the latest symptom of a structural rot in how the British media covers the royal family.

“Broadly speaking, there are lots of questions to be asked about the relationship between the palace and the royal rota,” Smith told The Daily Beast. “For example, we saw a piece this weekend about William’s relationship with the Church written by Roya Nikkhah in the Sunday Times, which seemed to just parrot the palace’s line.”

Smith drew a contrast between rota journalism and coverage from reporters operating outside that system—particularly in the wake of Prince Andrew’s arrest last month on suspicion of misconduct in public office, amid the continuing fallout of the Epstein files.

“When the Andrew scandal broke, and we saw the reporting of him to the police and other information that was coming out from the Epstein files and the arrest, we saw other journalists who weren’t from the royal rota talking about it and reporting on it. The tone and content of that journalism was very, very different to the rota journalism,” Smith said. “I think this raises very serious questions about the relationship journalists have with the palace, and what the palace does to keep them in line, and whether they are doing journalism or doing PR for the palace and royals.”

[From The Royalist Substack]

Picking up on what Graham Smith says here, I’d like to point out another relatively recent moment where a royal story broke containment and more legitimate reporters began covering the royals – it was Princess Kate’s 2024 disappearance, and the subsequent manipulated photo released on Mother’s Day. The rota was loath to question the bizarre and even hostile pushback from Kensington Palace over Kate’s disappearance, then all hell broke loose with that photo and all of the kill orders from international photo agencies. To this day, the rota still works hand-in-hand with Kensington Palace to reimagine and recast what actually went down in those months. I point out that issue because the larger mistake being made by both the palace and the rota is: believing that they can create an alternate universe, a royal, self-sustaining propaganda ecosystem where stories never break containment and everyone’s on the same page. That ecosystem is going to crash down on all of them in the coming years, at least that’s what I believe.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red. Cover courtesy of The Sun. Screencaps courtesy of Sky News.