Tom Bower Admits He Uses Trolls as Sources in His Prince Harry and Meghan Book

Tom Bower has spent years presenting himself as a serious investigator cutting through spin and exposing uncomfortable truths, but his latest television appearance managed to do something rather more revealing. In the space of a few minutes, Bower openly conceded that he had used comments from online trolls in his new book, then appeared irritated when Ben Shephard pressed him on whether that did not fundamentally undermine the credibility of his work.

It was a remarkable moment, not least because Bower did not seem to grasp how damaging the admission sounded. He wanted the authority of a carefully sourced biographer while also defending the inclusion of faceless online abuse as though it were somehow part of the historical record. It was not a minor slip. It went to the heart of the problem.

Tom Bower said the quiet part out loud

The moment that stood out came when Bower discussed a passage on Meghan and online reactions to her appearance at a party for Kerry Washington. Rather than rejecting the internet’s more toxic voices, he confirmed he had drawn directly from trolls.

He went further, admitting he did not believe the claim but included it regardless, arguing it formed part of Meghan’s life. That standard raises obvious concerns. If unverified online claims are deemed sufficient, the distinction between reporting and amplifying hostility becomes almost meaningless.

Ben Shephard understood the problem immediately. If a writer includes trolls in a book and then admits on air that he does not necessarily believe what they said, why should readers trust the rest of the sourcing either? That was the real issue, and Bower never answered it persuasively.

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When the sourcing problem becomes the story

What ultimately destabilised Tom Bower’s argument was not simply that he cited trolls, but that he admitted doing so while still presenting his work as authoritative. Once he admitted he had incorporated anonymous online voices into his narrative, he moved the focus away from Meghan and Prince Harry and onto the reliability of his own process.

Ben Shephard recognised that immediately. If a source is both anonymous and, by the author’s own admission, not necessarily believed, then its inclusion is not evidentiary; it is editorial. At that point, the book stops functioning as an investigation and begins to resemble a curated collection of hostility.

The ecosystem behind the “trolls”

Bower sidesteps the increasingly blurred boundary between so-called trolls and the media figures who claim to report on them, despite growing scrutiny of that overlap over the past year.

We reported on Nile Gardiner’s relentless campaign targeting Prince Harry’s visa records and the emergence of an alleged burner account that appeared to troll on his behalf while pushing identical anti-Meghan talking points. The account did not merely echo his views; it strengthened them, manufacturing the appearance of broader public outrage while pushing identical narratives from an anonymous voice before disappearing when scrutiny intensified.

Richard Eden has also faced persistent online speculation about anonymous accounts operating within the same anti-Meghan discourse, adding to a pattern that many observers have begun to question more closely.

Taken together, these cases point to something more deliberate than random online hostility. They suggest an ecosystem in which journalists and commentators are not merely reporting on public sentiment, but are, at times, accused of participating in its creation through anonymous or semi-anonymous accounts that amplify, recycle and legitimise anti-Meghan narratives.

Recognising that context changes what “troll” really means. It is no longer about outsiders shouting from the margins, but a system where media figures, anonymous accounts and published stories combine to manufacture outrage and pass it off as public sentiment.

From observation to amplification

This is where Bower’s defence collapses. Identifying a source as a troll does not neutralise its unreliability; it confirms that unreliable material has been consciously elevated. A biographer’s role is to interrogate information, not to reproduce the noise surrounding it.

By incorporating those voices into his book, Bower is not documenting the climate around Meghan and Harry so much as reinforcing it. The distinction is critical because once amplification replaces verification, the narrative begins to feed on itself.

As Shephard pressed him on this point, Bower appeared increasingly unwilling to engage with the implications. He attempted to reduce the issue to a minor detail, but the question remained central. If the sourcing is inconsistent, the authority of the conclusions cannot be separated from that weakness.

What made the exchange notable was not simply the pushback, but Bower’s response to it. A writer who has built a career scrutinising others struggled to sustain scrutiny of his own methods, and the imbalance was difficult to ignore.

A pattern now made explicit

Coverage of Meghan Sussex often relies on unnamed insiders and narratives that start online before appearing in print, as seen with Variety. Bower, perhaps unintentionally, exposed how that pipeline operates.

By using troll commentary as source material, he reveals just how blurred the line between online hostility and published narrative has become. Bower positions his work as a corrective to what he describes as a carefully managed public image. Yet his own account of how the material is assembled raises a more immediate concern about standards.

If anonymous commentary can be included without firm verification, then the burden shifts from subject to author. Readers are no longer evaluating Meghan and Harry. They are evaluating whether the framework used to judge them is reliable at all.

And once that question is opened, it does not close easily.