Three Weeks Later, Wrongest Royal Wedding Correspondent Still Mad She Was Wrong

Yvonne Yorke, the Huffington Post’s “award-winning journalist and Royal Contributor” is still steamed that her biggest “scoop” about Kate and William’s nuptials — Yorke claimed she knew “undoubtedly” that a designer named Sophie Cranston was making the wedding dress — was just flat-out wrong.

Last night, Yorke sent us an email to dispute a month-old post that pointed out Yorke’s inaccuracies (along with many other wrong things that were published in the run-up to the wedding) and to talk up her latest “huge coop” [sic].

Hi Jenna,

It was brought to my attention your story on the royal wedding dress designer:

http://jezebel.com/5797152/every-wrong-prediction-about-the-royal-wedding-dress

As you’ve pointed out, numerous royal editors and reporters have gotten the royal wedding dress designer wrong including The Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph, etc, I wonder how you came to the conclusion that “the biggest whopper of all came from Yvonne Yorke…” So how is my error so much greater than the errors by other reporters who had mistakenly touted Bruce Oldfield, Alice Temperley, and others? You’ve also seem to miss the fact that 2 days after my HuffPost story on Sophie Cranston is said to be the wedding dress designer, the Daily Mail also supported Cranston as the designer in their own story which further added that Kate designed the dress herself before taking the concept to Cranston to make. I would think that would be a bigger whopper since it had two errors in that report!

I fully admit that my source who told me about Cranston had been wrong and that I was mistaken, however, no royal journalist is 100% correct whether it’s the dress designer or the stag party location (which the Sun famously got wrong) or the hen pary plans (which the Mail of Sunday also famously got many details wrong) . It’s easy for someone who’s not a royal corrrespondent to nitpick but I’d like to see anyone do better at royal coverage and exclusives. I would venture that I’ve had a better track record than most. Everything else I’ve reported on the wedding dress and the wedding had been CORRECT including:

1) I reported that the designer is a young little-known, British female (we might have heard of McQueen but Sarah Burton was certainly not a household name until April 29)

2) I said that the wedding dress will be traditional in design rather than cutting-edge. (Despite going to the most avant-garde British fashion house, the dress looked nothing like a typical McQueen creation and had none of the edge the house is renowned for)

3) The dress will feature embroidery and will have a short train

4) Kate had chosen a modest-sized tiara from the Queen’s collection that has not been seen for a long time (The halo has not been worn in public for over 25 years since Princess Anne last worn it)

5 ) Not to mention, that I outscooped even the British media by correctly reporting that Kate had been learning Welsh secretly and nobody else had known about it since she learned it on her own – this was later revealed during the first joint public engagement in Angelsey when Kate started singing along to the Welsh national anthem and even the BBC in their news report had noted that “nobody in the UK knew but it was an American journalist who first reported that Kate had been learning Welsh”

6) Of course, the latest royal exclusive I’ve right is the royal honeymoon destination.
On April 10th, I identified the Seychelles as the most likely of all the many rumored honeymoon locations – another huge coop!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yvonne-yorke/william-kate-middleton-honeymoon-seychelles_b_845210.html

I don’t mind that you pointed out when I’ve gotten something wrong, but in the interest of journalistic integrity, it would only be fair when you take into context the many more times where I’ve gotten royal exclusives correct!

Sincerely,

Yvonne Yorke

P.S: Not sure why you’ve put the fact that I’m both an award-winning journalist and a royal correspondent in quotations, as if there’s any doubts. The fact that I’m both is easily proven. 🙂

Also, we hear that Yvonne Yorke exclusively predicted the wedding dress would be white. There you have it! She may have named the wrong designer, but Yvonne Yorke is all about the larger truth.