Interesting Muhler, thank you.
To me it seemed a standard (and successful) short trip abroad and the UK press has written about it as such, despite being overshadowed by HMTQs health and Ukraine. It was pretty much in the same vein as William's trip to the UAE which has also been considered a success and was done both at the behest of the government and his own Earthshot promotion. Both are obviously different to the Danish way of doing things. The press says it's partly a working/fact finding trip and to officially congratulate QMII on her Jubilee.
The BRF typically uses their accompanying journalists to inform the public of the details of the visit, including more details on what Kate said and thought and why she went and who exactly everyone was, like this Telegraph article:
https://archive.ph/Gf5Rg
If she held an actual press conference or answered a lot of questions directly to camera it would probably be considered that she was trying to hog the limelight in the UK, rather than give "meat" to her visit. Perhaps it's a case of different cultural attitudes, I don't know. I also would have liked to hear more of her opinion but I'm not surprised that we didn't get that much.
We did get this snippet from their instagram page about her thoughts:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CaS4IzAgKAQ/
It is highly possible that she will give a speech that includes the concepts she saw in action here, at a later date with her Early Years Centre but it would have been unusual to hear one at this point. She probably listened more than anything.
We know she has put a lot of prep in for this visit because the CC has been listing her as on conference calls and zooms about it for weeks so most of the actual learning about the concepts and science behind the world class Danish childcare and educational systems had already been done.
The actual visit is a lot to do with PR and publicity for *both* countries as well as soft diplomacy - which doesn't seem to have worked with BT.
Thanks.
I read the Telegraph article and it was pretty thin!
I think the British press coverage was crap. Certainly what I have seen so far.
Kate deserves better.
I just watched the Danish news coverage on the main news tonight (on TV2). A four minutes segment, where we actually heard Kate say something.
We heard about why Kate wanted to visit the forest kindergarten and why she wanted to visit the women's shelter.
We heard something about what Kate was told, what she asked into, that she asked a lot of questions - half of which Mary answered due to her heavy involvement in women's shelters through the Mary Foundation. How Kate was presented to and explained about the backpack all children who seek refuge at these centers with their mothers are given. Which contains a couple of toys, a little stuffed animal for comfort, drawing material for the child to express itself and work on the dramatic experience it is to basically flee from dad.
That's standard press coverage here and that's what we expect. So why in the name of the holy banana-tree can't the British press do something similar?
I think it's lazy journalism.
I also believe it wouldn't hurt if Kate in this case said something prepared to the press. She doesn't even have to answer questions.
Something akin to: I wanted to see the kindergarten where the (inner city-children in this case, from families with social issues) children are outside all day, all year. I think Charlotte would love this - blah-blah...
I wanted to learn about how they deal with the traumatic experience children go through when they seek refuge at such a shelter with their mothers. And we really ought to address that issue. (That's akin to saying: We really ought to do something about children starving, no one can object to that.)
Then we would have a woman who not only appear on photos, but who actually says something meaningful to the public. Who has a message and an (not too controversial) opinion. - I think it would make Kate's already considerable popularity go through the roof in Britain.
As it is the concept is: Kate is going to DK to visit a Lego-family house, an outdoor kindergarten and a women's shelter - figure out yourselves why.
So yes, the press is going to opt for the easy way out: Photos, photos and more photos, and a few factual captions that has been googled.
I don't know if it's a cultural thing, but there is certainly a difference in coverage and interaction with the press here.
Mary (and our Marie as well) would be ripped to shreds and ridiculed if she only posed and didn't say something. In fact in the beginning Mary got some criticism for too much posing and too little substance in regards to Danish fashion (which is a major export sector, so her focus was actually valid and appreciated by the industry.)
It has been suggested in the DK press, based on something a British royal author said (don't know her, I guess there are so many that you can feed pigs with "royal authors" in UK) that is that W&K may want to be inspired by how the Continental royals do things.
I'm not so sure though. While I believe W&K will and needs to implement reforms for the BRF it will be their own version in whatever form that may be.
Another reason for my skepticism of that suggestion is that this was clearly a BRF event in Denmark, that only fleetingly involved the DRF.