Some eight years after Prince Harry went into open legal conflict against the British tabloid press, winning a number of high-profile court battles against big media organisations on the way, he has lost the war.
Judged by his own criteria — to hold those in senior positions to account for what he said was their malign influence on journalism — King Charles’ younger son has failed in the overarching mission.
Defeat on Tuesday against Associated Newspapers, publisher of the Daily Mail, perhaps the most important of all the cases for him, will be hard to swallow.
The judgement dismissed every single one of 97 claims made against the newspaper by Harry, Elton John and five other high-profile claimants.
DISDAIN FOR THE PRESS
Harry’s disdain for much of the media is both long held and personal. He has made no secret that he blames the press for the death of his mother, Princess Diana, who was killed in a crash in Paris in 1997 as her car sped away from chasing photographers when he was just 12.
Since then, he says newspapers’ incessant intrusion into his private life destroyed friendships and his relationship with former girlfriend Chelsy Davy.
But it was the “vicious persistent attacks” on his American wife that were the final straw, prompting a series of lawsuits against titles he accused of being misogynistic and racist against Meghan, whose mother is Black and father is white.
“The worst of it is that by sitting up here and taking a stand against them, like they have done through this litigation, they continue to come after me. They have made my wife’s life an absolute misery,” he told the High Court when he gave evidence against Associated, struggling to hold back tears.
In his witness statements for the various lawsuits, he referred to how he saw his cause as being one of public duty, reflecting his background not just as a royal but as a soldier in the British army for a decade.
“There is obviously a personal element to bringing this claim, motivated by truth, justice and accountability, but it is not just about me,” he said in his statement in the Associated case.
“There is also a social element concerning all the thousands of people whose lives were invaded because of greed as, if the most influential newspaper company can successfully evade justice, then in my opinion the whole country is doomed.”
HARRY HAD TARGETED SENIOR PRESS FIGURES
He has been frank about the senior figures he targeted such as Paul Dacre, the long-time editor of the Daily Mail, and Piers Morgan, a former editor of the Daily Mirror who in subsequent broadcasting roles has regularly criticised Harry and Meghan.
Rebekah Brooks, the former editor of the Sun tabloid and then British chief for Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, has long been a nemesis who he described as a “loathsome toad” in his memoir “Spare”.
However, none of the court judgments have damned them as he might have hoped. Nor have the police launched any new criminal investigations, as he requested.
While Harry was able to extract an admission from News Group Newspapers that the Sun had been involved in unlawful actions, no journalist was incriminated. Brooks remains its CEO.
The High Court ruling concluded editors at the Mirror knew about phone hacking at his newspaper, but Morgan was not singled out and he has always denied any involvement in the practice.
He remains a prominent media figure with his “Piers Morgan Uncensored” YouTube channel boasting 4.4 million subscribers.
Dacre, the editor-in−chief of Associated and former Mail editor for 26 years, was a “straightforward and generally careful witness” who remained composed and focused in giving his evidence, the ruling on Tuesday said.
Dacre, who called the verdict an “overwhelming vindication” of the Mail’s journalism, was scathing about Harry and the other claimants.
“Prince Harry wrote a sad book which boasted about his killing of 25 Taliban, his drug-taking and, in cringe-making detail, how he lost his virginity,” he said in a statement.
“There isn’t a laundry in the cosmos big enough to wash all the dirty linen he has aired about his own family. For him, to complain about HIS privacy being invaded takes, not just the biscuit, but the whole tin.”
RAMPANT DESIRE FOR ROYAL NEWS
If anything, since he launched his lawsuits in 2018 media focus on the royals has only grown, as the family continue to be viewed as a massive commercial business.
Podcasts and blogs dedicated to the Windsors are ubiquitous, tabloids’ websites dedicate huge space to stories about them, and even broadsheet newspapers have sections specifically for the royal family.
Not a day goes by without numerous stories appearing about them online. When it comes to Harry and Meghan, most of those stories are negative.
In recent years, supporters of Harry have noted how similar stories that were positive about Kate, the wife of heir-to-the-throne Prince William, were presented in a negative light when written about Meghan.
In one example, while Kate was praised for eating avocados to tackle morning sickness, Meghan’s preference for an avocado was described by the Daily Mail in 2019 “as fuelling human rights abuses, drought and murder”.
Media lawyer Mark Stephens said Harry’s earlier campaigns against newspapers had largely been successful, but it was time to reappraise a media sector that was very different than it was at the time of Princess Diana.
“From Harry’s perspective, he is a man who thinks he lost his mother, believes he lost his mother, through an aggressive chase from the media,” he said. “He, I think, is psychologically trying to right that wrong.”
The court cases have also been costly for Harry. Not just in terms of legal fees — with the Mail case incurring total legal fees of £50 million according to Associated — but also their impact on his relations with his own family.
After leaving royal duties in 2020 and moving to California, he accused some of them of getting “in the bed with the devil” by building up relations with the press in return for positive coverage.
It was that sort of criticism which helped contribute to his very public falling out with his older brother, William, and with his father, who Harry said had warned him that taking on the press “was probably a suicide mission”.
(Reporting by Michael Holden and Sam Tobin）
