Rumour consumers

Catherine, Princess of Wales, seems pale but calm as she looks into the camera. "I wanted to take this opportunity to say thank you, personally," she says, "for all the wonderful messages of support and for your understanding whilst I have been recovering from surgery. It has been an incredibly tough couple of months...

"In January, I underwent major abdominal surgery in London. The surgery was successful. However, tests after the operation found cancer had been present... We hope that you will understand that, as a family, we now need some time, space and privacy."

No other member of the royal family has spoken so openly about their health. The fact that Kate felt it necessary to do so is a measure of how perniciousHarmful. the rumours spread about her were.

Some focused on the fact that the picture of her with her children published on Mothers' Day had been photoshopped. Others suggested that she was having cosmetic surgery and a lookalike had been used for a video of her and Prince William at a farm shop. Meanwhile, in real life, she was undergoing preventative chemotherapyA treatment for cancer that uses powerful drugs to kill cells..

As Helen Lewis notes in American magazine The Atlantic, the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.

Yet American TV presenter Stephen Colbert made jokes about Kate's disappearance from public life, suggesting that Prince William was having an affair.¹ He was joined by thousands of people online.

The Archbishop of CanterburyAlthough the head of the Church of England is the Queen, the Archbishop is the most senior bishop and symbolic head of the worldwide Anglican communion. condemned the rumour-mongers:² "We are obsessed with conspiracy and we have little sense of the humanity of those who are caught in the glare of the news... It's extremely unhealthy. It's just old-fashioned village gossip that can now go round the world in seconds. We have to turn away from that."

"Finally the wicked social media trolls will be silenced," declared Jennie Bond in The i newspaper. "I hope the conspiracy theorists who have spread such absurd and hurtful rubbish feel ashamed. They deserve to."

But will they? "The new tone of online sobrietyDepending on context - being solemn or serious, or not drinking alcohol. might last a while, given the gravity and sensitivity of the princess's situation," argues Vanessa Thorpe in The Observer. "But the appetite for status updates on her health will not go away."

Charlie Warzel, also writing in The Atlantic, argues that because the internet contains so much information, people feel they need transparency in everything.

This need "is, frequently, a selfish one, and often that knowledge comes at a cost to others. Because although the Middleton memes are mostly silly... they're also dark and voyeuristicGetting enjoyment from seeing the pain of others or their private lives. - a sea of people having fun online because it is unclear whether a famous person is well or not."

But the historian Yuval Noah Harari argues that gossip has been essential to our evolution and survival. It was a way for our early ancestors "to make allies, learn who could be trusted and who was best to avoid. Gossiping is a fundamental part of human connection...today, it can used as a bonding factor in friendships."³

Are we all guilty?

Yes: We live in a society where gossip is seen as a commodity by newspapers and social media platforms. We are collectively responsible for this state of affairs and are not doing enough to combat it.

No: It is entirely proper to take an interest in a public figure. That interest only becomes gossip among small-minded people with such uninteresting lives that they have to pick apart those of others.

Or... Gossip helps to ensure that people behave in a responsible way. Everyone will act more carefully and openly if they believe they are in danger of having rumours spread about them.