Royal experts accuse BBC of 'anti-William and pro-Meghan and Harry' bias in explosive documentary

BBC has been accused of favouring Prince Harry and Meghan Markle over Prince William and other members of the British royal family in their new documentary "The Princes and The Press."

The two-part BBC2 series featured an interview with Omid Scobie, a royal journalist considered a friend of the Sussexes, claiming that the royal households fed negative stories about the couple to the press during their exit as senior royals. The documentary also interviewed Jenny Afia, a lawyer representing the Duchess of Sussex who insisted the bullying claims against the former actress were "false."

However, the documentary didn't interview a representative from the royal family's side, other than a written statement that flashed on the screen, despite complaints from the royal households at not being given a chance to reply. Royal experts told Mail Online that the programme was "very biased" against Prince William and Prince Charles and painted a picture favourable to Harry and Meghan.

Prince Harry's biographer Angela Levin said the bias was evident when the documentary featured the Duchess of Sussex's British lawyer in its last interview. She explained, "The ending of the documentary is always what stays with you and they chose to use Meghan's lawyer to say that she wasn't a bully, and she was wonderful to work with. It's there you get the gist of what it was all about in my view. It's very biased. Anti-William, anti-Charles and pro Meghan and Harry."

"If you allow a lawyer from one side to have their say then they must let the other side have their say. They haven't done that and that's in the BBC guidelines," the author added.

Royal expert Richard Fitzwilliams predicted that part two of the documentary that is scheduled to air next Monday will "undoubtedly worsen" relations between William and Harry, as well as the BBC and Buckingham Palace. He said: "The second part will undoubtedly deal with the rift between the previously inseparable Princes and how the press covered it. This is a tragedy and has played out worldwide without, so far, any signs of being healed."

Meanwhile, royal expert Richard Kay questioned why the interviewers did not question Omid Scobie about his own relationship with the Duke and the Duchess of Sussex. The co-author of "Finding Freedom" is often dubbed as "Meghan's mouthpiece" after he painted a flattering picture of her and Harry in the book as well as in his other interviews. Kay noted that Scobie was also not asked about Meghan's recent apology in the Court of Appeal for forgetting to mention that she had instructed her aide to brief the author on his book.

"The absence of such critical information in a BBC documentary seems not just bizarre but wilful...But surely the biggest fault-line running through the programme was the BBC's own complicity in controversial royal coverage and the absence of any mention of the Martin Bashir saga," Kay added.