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Royal Commentator’s Career in Ruins After YouTube Prank

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Updated on June 23, 2023

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Victoria Arbiter, a former CNN commentator and royal expert, has revealed the devastating impact of a YouTube prank on her career.

In an episode of Newsweek’s The Royal Report podcast, Arbiter explained how she was left labeled a liar and a Nazi-supporting white supremacist after the prank was pulled.

In 2021, Arbiter, along with other royal commentators, took part in interviews ahead of the release of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s sit-down with Oprah Winfrey.

The interviews were to provide background context and would be speaking about the interview in the past tense as part of a special program being pre-recorded to go live after the Oprah broadcast.

However, YouTube content creators Archie Matters and Josh Peters released the interviews speaking as if Harry and Meghan’s interview had already happened, ahead of the broadcast instead, under the title, “We Proved Royal Experts Lie About Harry and Meghan.”

She added that it was every name under the sun, but more upsetting was that her employers were being bombarded with accusations of her being a liar and a Nazi-supporting white supremacist, an apartheid supporter, the most slanderous, most inflammatory comments, and it just came, and came and came, and it spiraled out of control.

After a swift request from Arbiter, Manners and Peters removed her sections from the video, but the damage had been done.

It resulted in Arbiter losing all of her work and losing her ability to earn a pension.

She also lost her health insurance, which was a resident in the United States, a very scary position to be in.

She has since spent all of her savings fighting this with lawyers because the evidence illustrates clearly that at no point did she lie or suggest that she had seen something or do anything wrong.

Despite believing she has a strong legal case to bring against the pranksters, not only for defamation, but also for the lengths they went to secure the interviews, Arbiter is giving up the fight as the expense of bringing the case is too large.

She said, “Two and a half years later, lawyers have been amazing, but the UK justice system is prohibitively expensive.

So, I’ve kind of come to the end of the line in terms of what I can do, and I continue to deal with the consequences.”

Arbiter said that the YouTubers did offer to apologize, but they apologized that she decided to take part in their video.

That’s not an apology, she said.

That’s just a backhanded, she did something wrong.

But the point is that she didn’t do anything wrong.

The YouTube video without Arbiter’s parts included has currently been viewed over 1.6 million times on the platform, and has over 87,000 likes and 8,000 comments.

Arbiter’s experience highlights the dangers of online pranks and the potential damage they can cause to people’s lives and careers.

It also highlights the need for accountability and responsibility when creating and sharing content online.

What happened to Arbiter is a reminder that what we post online can have real-world consequences, and it’s important to consider the impact our actions may have on others.

As always, we encourage you to share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Stay tuned for more updates on the intriguing world of royalty.