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Prince Harry Begins Legal Action Against Tabloids Over Phone Hacking Prince Harry Begins Legal Action Against Tabloids Over Phone Hacking
(about 3 hours later)
LONDON — Prince Harry has started legal proceedings against the owners of two British tabloids over accusations that they hacked his phones, Buckingham Palace confirmed on Friday, opening a new front in a remarkable campaign against the British press. LONDON — Prince Harry has started legal proceedings against the owners of two British tabloids over accusations that they hacked his phones, Buckingham Palace confirmed on Friday, opening a new front in a remarkable crusade against the British press.
Coming at the end of a 10-day royal tour of southern Africa that was lavishly covered by the British press, Prince Harry’s broadsides rankled some royal insiders and stunned longtime palace observers. They amounted to an unusually public rupture in an old, symbiotic relationship, one that shatters the longtime royal mantra: “Never complain, never explain.” Coming at the end of a 10-day royal tour of southern Africa that was lavishly covered by the British news media, Prince Harry’s broadsides rankled some royal insiders and stunned longtime palace observers. They amounted to an unusually public rupture in an old, symbiotic relationship, one that shatters a longtime royal mantra: “Never complain, never explain.”
It was the second time in recent days that the prince took aim at British tabloids. Earlier this week he said that Meghan had been a victim of “a ruthless campaign” against her, and that he had been “a silent witness to her private suffering for too long.” The legal claims address allegations that the tabloids illegally intercepted Prince Harry’s voice mail messages, perhaps as far back as in the early 2000s, British news reports suggested.
The legal action concerns allegations that the tabloids had illegally intercepted voice mail messages, though there were few additional details. British news outlets reported that the claims likely stemmed from incidents of phone hacking in the early 2000s. Those accusations could potentially excavate a phone-hacking scandal of that period that touched a vast number of victims, eventually leading to the conviction of a tabloid editor, the shutdown of a popular newspaper and sweeping changes to the rules governing news coverage in Britain.
The claims were brought last week against the owners of The Sun and The Daily Mirror, according to court filings published in the British press. Prince Harry’s claims were brought last week against the owners of The Sun and The Daily Mirror, according to court filings. Reach PLC, which owns The Mirror, declined to comment on Friday night. A message left for Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers, which owns The Sun and published the News of the World, was not immediately returned.
Reach PLC, which owns The Mirror, declined to comment on Friday night. A message left for Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers, which owns The Sun, was not immediately returned. But the claims were only one part of a combative campaign by Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, to highlight what Prince Harry has described as the “relentless propaganda” and “continual misrepresentations” of the tabloid press.
News Group Newspapers confirmed to the BBC that Prince Harry had issued a legal claim but declined to comment. The newspapers, he warned in an emotional 10-paragraph statement earlier this week, threatened to repeat the suffering inflicted by the tabloids’ treatment of his mother, Princess Diana.
There were few specifics about the action Prince Harry had taken. Proceedings like the one he initiated are generally the first step in a possible legal action, starting the clock on escalating measures. Usually, the proceedings are a way to give notice of complaints and demand redress — allowing for the other party to respond — before lawyers formally bring a case to court. She was hounded by the paparazzi for years, especially toward the end of her marriage, and she died in 1997 in a car crash in Paris, as her driver tried to elude photographers.
Though the royal family’s turbulent relationship with the British tabloids goes back decades, Buckingham Palace has rarely declared its displeasure about them in public. The tabloids’ coverage has seesawed between breathless celebration — especially of weddings and births — and breathless outrage about rumors of infidelity and royal excess. “I’ve seen what happens when someone I love is commoditized to the point that they are no longer treated or seen as a real person,” Prince Harry wrote this week. “I lost my mother and now I watch my wife falling victim to the same powerful forces.”
But Prince Harry and Meghan have had an especially contentious history with the press. Meghan, known as Meghan Markle when she worked as an actress, has faced an abundance of unflattering coverage, and Prince Harry and others have accused the news media of drawing on racist attitudes about the relationship. The couple has also reportedly stewed over more straightforward criticism, like that for the 2.4 million pound, or $3 million, price tag for taxpayer-funded renovations to their house.
In 2016, Harry accused the tabloids of using “racial undertones” in their coverage about Meghan, who is biracial and an American, and was known as Meghan Markle as an actress. Several days after Prince Harry filed his phone-hacking claims last week, Meghan also issued legal proceedings against a tabloid, The Mail on Sunday. She argued that the newspaper had breached her privacy and infringed on copyright by publishing a private letter. The newspaper has denied wrongdoing.
In the months ahead of their wedding, the tabloids wrote extensively about Meghan’s family, and this week the prince alluded to how the news media had affected his mother, Princess Diana, who died in a 1997 car crash in Paris as her driver tried to elude paparazzi. English law dictates that the author of a letter owns its content, no matter who has it, giving the duchess a strong case, legal experts said. But newspapers have been more alarmed by her claim that the publication stepped on her privacy, an allegation that, if upheld, could become the basis for a spate of legal actions by celebrities over unwanted coverage.
Earlier this week, Prince Harry announced that Meghan had filed a claim against another tabloid, The Mail on Sunday, and its parent company, over the publication of a letter. His statement did not identify what article prompted the lawsuit, but in February the tabloid published a letter that Meghan had sent to her estranged father. The royal family has sued the press before. And the royals have long done what they can to curtail newspapers’ access to their personal lives, seeking to stymie the lacerating articles about their indulgences even as they court more admiring coverage for their weddings and tours overseas.
In his statement at the time, Harry accused the tabloid of “unlawfully” publishing a private letter, and said of “strategically omitting select paragraphs, specific sentences, and even singular words to mask the lies they had perpetuated for over a year.” But the succession of rebukes that Prince Harry and Meghan dealt the press over the last week was unusual, even by the standards of that sometimes bitter history.
The tabloid disputed that accusation, saying it stood by the story and would defend it. “We categorically deny that the Duchess’s letter was edited in any way that changed its meaning,” a spokesman for The Mail on Sunday said. For one thing, Prince Harry objected not only to the particular articles that tabloids had written about him and his wife, but also to what he called a “long and disturbing pattern of behavior by British tabloid media.”
“It destroys people and destroys lives,” he wrote in his statement. “Put simply, it is bullying, which scares and silences people. We all know this isn’t acceptable, at any level.”
The actions startled longtime royal observers not only for their bluntness, but also for the independence the couple was exercising.
Prince Harry’s statement, published on a personal website that had nothing else on it, took even Buckingham Palace’s press office by surprise, British news reports said. It was all the more grating to some British officials because it came during the royal couple’s publicly funded tour of southern Africa, a trip that was arranged by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and had — until then — drawn flattering headlines.
The couple also spurned the services of the firm that usually represents the queen in dealings with the news media, choosing one legal team for Meghan’s filings and another for Prince Harry’s claim — a firm that has won major payouts in phone-hacking cases.
The owner of The Sun also published the now-defunct News of the World, which shuttered in the wake of revelations about its involvement in the phone-hacking scandal of the early 2000s.
But apart from the bare-bones filings, first reported by the news site Byline Investigates, there were few specifics about Prince Harry’s legal action.
Proceedings like the one he initiated are generally the first step in a possible legal action, starting the clock on escalating measures. Usually, the proceedings are a way to give notice of complaints and demand redress before lawyers formally bring a case to court.
The phone-hacking scandal was set off when the News of the World published a story about Prince William’s medical treatment following an injury, information that observers deduced could have been unearthed only by listening to the prince’s voice mails.
Journalists used the tactic of listening to people’s voice mails to target crime victims, celebrities and politicians, creating a cloud over the British press that led to extensive litigation and lingered for years. Until Prince Harry’s filing, though, the royal family had stayed away from the legal campaign against phone hacking.