LONDON:Prince Harry’s war against the British press heads into a final showdown next week with the start of his
privacy lawsuit against the publisher of the powerful Daily Mail newspaper over alleged unlawful action he says contributed to his departure for the US
The 41-year-old Harry, a boy when his mother Princess Diana died in a 1997 car crash with paparazzi in pursuit, has long resented the often aggressive tactics of British media and pledged to bring them to account.
Harry, who is King Charles’ younger son, and six other claimants including singer Elton John are suing Associated Newspapers over years of alleged unlawful behavior, ranging from bugging phone lines to obtaining personal health records.
Associated has rejected any wrongdoing, calling the accusations “preposterous smears” and part of a conspiracy.
Over the course of nine weeks, Harry, John and the other claimants – John’s husband David Furnish, actors Liz Hurley and Sadie Frost, campaigner Doreen Lawrence, and former British lawmaker Simon Hughes – will give evidence to the High Court in London and be grilled by Associated’s lawyers.
The prince is due to appear next Thursday. It will be his second such court appearance in the witness box in three years, having become the first British royal to give evidence in 130 years in 2023 in another lawsuit.
Current and former senior Associated staff, including a number of editors of national newspapers, will likewise be quizzed by the claimants’ legal team. The stakes for both sides are high, with not just the reputation of media and claimants on the line, but because legal costs are set to run into tens of millions of pounds. Critics say Harry, the Duke of Sussex, is bitter over unfavorable coverage, from partying in his youth to quarrelling with his family and leaving the UK in later years.
But supporters say it is a noble cause against sometimes immoral media.
“He seems to be motivated by a lot more than money,” said Damian Tambini, an expert in media and communications regulation and policy at the London School of Economics.
“He’s actually trying to, along with many of the other complainants, affect change in the newspapers.”
Harry and his American wife Meghan have cited media harassment as one of the main factors that led them to stepping down from royal duties and moving to California in 2020. Elton John, 77, also has history in the courts with the British press, successfully suing newspapers including the Daily Mail for libel. He received 1 million pounds ($1.34 million) from the Sun in a 1988 settlement over a false allegation about sex sessions with male prostitutes.
Having successfully sued Mirror Group Newspapers, and also won damages, an apology and some admission of wrongdoing from Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers (NGN), the case against Associated could be Harry’s most significant. The 130-year-old Daily Mail, renowned for championing traditional, conservative values, for decades has been one of, if not the most powerful media force within Britain and unlike the Mirror and NGN has not been embroiled in the phone-hacking scandal.
It says it gives voice to millions in “Middle England,” holding the rich, powerful and famous to account.
In 1997, it famously ran a front page denouncing five men accused of the racist killing of Black teenager Stephen Lawrence as murderers and challenging anyone to sue if that was wrong.
The case was a defining moment in race relations in Britain.
Despite that, one of those now suing the Mail is Doreen Lawrence, the mother of murdered Stephen, who says journalists tapped her phones, monitored her bank accounts and phone bills, and paid police for confidential information.
The Associated case will mark one of the final airings in court of accusations of phone-hacking which have dogged the British press for more than 20 years.
The practice of unlawfully accessing voicemails fully burst onto the public agenda in 2011, leading to the closure of Murdoch’s News of the World tabloid, the jailing of its former editor who had later worked as a communications chief for ex-Prime Minister David Cameron, and a public inquiry.
Murdoch’s NGN and the Mirror Group have since both paid out hundreds of millions of pounds to victims of the unlawful activity.
If the claimants lose, Tambini said, “this could be the moment when phone hacking, finally, as a set of issues, went away.”
