Old Bailey jury ordered not to watch BBC documentary on royals
|
Version 0 of 1. The jury in a trial at the Old Bailey have been ordered not to watch a BBC documentary on the royal family’s relations with the media amid concerns it could prejudice a fair trial of the Sun’s royal editor. In a written direction Mr Justice Saunders told jurors not to watch the programme, not to discuss it with friends, or to read any commentary in the paper. To do so, he said, could be “contempt of court” which could “result in a fine or imprisonment”. He told jurors the programme “deals with relations between the royal family and the press. Those relations play some part in this trial. It would be quite wrong if you were to take into account anything which was said on that programme when deciding this case. It will not have been considered in court,” he said. “People who express a view in the programme could not be challenged on the view that they express. “To avoid any risk of influencing your verdict you are not to watch it,” he said. The two-part documentary, Reinventing the Royals, has been promoted as an investigation into the 20-year battle between the royals and the media, looking at their “personal privacy and public image”. Mr Justice Saunders is concerned that commentary in the programme could prejudice the trial of Duncan Larcombe and his co-defendants, a Sandhurst officer and his wife. He has been accused of plotting together with them to cause misconduct in public officer in connection with alleged payments for stories about the royals. Opening his case, Richard Kovalevsky QC, told jurors that Larcombe had a “moral code” which he “applies strictly” in relation to reporting on the royal family. “In my own view I don’t think I have done anything wrong and I am still have yet to be convinced why I’m sitting here,” said Larcombe. He said he believed the public had a right to know about the lives of the second and third in line to the throne but there were limits which the Sun respected. “Anytime I was asked to back off, I did. I have left countries.” He recalled how he was once asked to leave an island off Mozambique where Prince Harry was holidaying with his then girlfriend Chelsy Davy. He had spent three hours making the journey to the island on a fishing boat and turned up looking like “Robinson Crusoe”. Standing on the shore was Prince Harry’s royal protection officer, Chris Tarr, who Larcombe had met previously. Larcombe told jurors he asked Tarr if he could get a ride back to the mainland in the hotel plane. “Tarr started to laugh and said ‘can you help me?” “Do you know someone called Sarah Arnold from the News of the World?” “What’s the problem,” asked Larcombe. “She’s sitting over at the bar ,” replied Tarr. “She’s here with the photographer and pretending to be on honeymoon, could you just have a quiet word with them and maybe they could go back to the mainland with you,” he said. Larcombe said he felt awkward but approached Arnold, who he knew, and told her: “I have been asked to to mark your card that you’re not on honeymoon.” He said he got “a very strange reaction”. She told him: ‘I don’t know that your talking about. This is my new husband’. “I thought she had been drinking the seawater to be honest,” said Larcombe. He returned to the mainland and said he thought the News of the World later regretted that they didn’t either. He told jurors of another incident in which the Sun handed photos of Prince William and Kate Middleton snatched while they were on holiday in Mustique back to Clarence House. The photos, which he described as “very intimate” were “incredible”. The seller was looking for £25,000, but they could have been worth £500,000, said Larcombe. The newsdesk had asked Larcombe to check out the source of the photos but “alarm bells started ringing” after he spoke to the man who had phoned the paper. “He didn’t sound like an Old Etonian who had been holidaying on the island,” said Larcombe. The paper quickly realised the photos, on a memory stick, did not belong to him and handed them over to the prince. Later it transpired they had been stolen from Pippa Middelton’s handbag, jurors were told. Larcombe said he stood by every single one of the stories he had written during his time at the Sun and following a strict code of practice to ensure he didn’t invade the princes’ privacy. “There aren’t any official rules, but it’s about building a relationship with them, they know they are going to be photrographed, but also it’s about not being followed everywhere and having their lives ruined,” said Larcombe. Larcombe met the princes on many occasions and explained that on royal tours Prince William would join the press for a pre-arranged drink. He said he joined his first paper a week before Princess Diana died and was acutely aware of the press complaints commission code being updated to give the princes a media-free childhood that lasted until they finished their education. When he became royal editor of the Sun Prince William had just finished at St Andrews university and Prince Harry had finished school and was about to go to Sandhurst. He said this was a “blank canvas” for the press as the PCC code had not been updated to account for the new era of princes in their adulthood. Larcombe recalled the intense interest the paparazzi were taking in Middleton when she was dating Prince William and had seen her “absolutely surrounded” by press and TV cameras on the street outside her flat on the day of her birthday. He said this heightened concerns that there may be another Diana-style “tunnel incident” and he suggested to his then editor Rebekah Brooks that they should embargo all photographs of Middleton that had been taken when she was not with William and his royal protection officers. “I sensed very quickly that William and Harry hated the paparazzi. “I thought the way they were being treated, there was real danger that in my view after this seven-year period [of press-free living] there was a fear … that because there were no proper guidelines, the fear was there could be another tunnel incident where the paparazzi can just chase them all round the world, hound them without any limits,” said Larcombe. He said Brooks needed no persuading to agree a self-imposed ban on paparazzi shots and the company announced it had “banned” the use of all photos of Middleton taken while she was on her own, in all its titles. Larcombe has been charged with conspiring to cause misconduct in public office along with three other senior Sun journalists. They all deny the charges. The trial continues. |