Why is Prince Harry in London? His (latest) battle against the press.

By Karla Adam

Washington Post

LONDON – Prince Harry ensures his recent legal battle against the British press is widely covered by the same press. It is not necessary at all for King Charles‘ youngest son, who is attending a hearing in London’s High Court this week, but the fact he opted to fly in from California rather than register remotely speaks volumes about how seriously he takes the case.

Harry joins others in acquiring one of Britain’s largest newspaper publishers, Associated Newspapers, whose titles include the popular tabloids Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday. They accuse phone hacking and misuse of private information. The publisher vehemently denies the allegations. The hearing will decide whether to go to court.

While other newspapers have been implicated in the phone hacking scandal, this is the first major lawsuit of its kind involving Associated Newspapers.

Harry’s disgust with the British tabloids is no secret. He blames the press for their role in the death of his mother, Princess Diana. In his book Spare, Harry describes their relentless molestation, particularly of past girlfriends, and in his Netflix series he blamed the stress caused by the Daily Mail tabloid for his wife Meghan miscarrying.

Harry is embroiled in several ongoing legal disputes with the British press. The prince could testify in a phone-hacking trial against the Mirror Group newspaper in May.

It’s highly unusual for British royals to take on the media – they are said to live by the ‘never explain, never complain’ maxim.

But “Harry feels capable of it, he’s outside the royal family and sees it as an important part of his life. His mission is to take action that his brother and father cannot, given their constitutional position in British society,” he said Matt WalshHead of the Journalism School at Cardiff University.

Surely royals “exercise informal power over the press, holding briefings and throwing stories into the long grass, but actually taking legal action against newspaper groups? Royals have avoided this as much as possible. It’s really just Harry trying to calm the press down,” he said.

Harry is one of seven high-profile plaintiffs suing the publisher. Belong to the others Elton-John and his husband David Furnishthe actress Elizabeth HurleyAnd Doreen Lawrence, the mother of Stephen Lawrence, who was murdered in a racist attack in 1993. Lawrence’s involvement raised eyebrows as the Mail has long been proud of its support for her, a widely respected figure in the country.

Details of the allegations have leaked out in court. For example, the publisher allegedly paid a private investigator to hack into Hurley’s phone, attach a mini microphone to a window outside her home, and bug her ex-boyfriend Hugh Grant’s car to get information about her during her pregnancy .

Walsh said the allegations against the Daily Mail are of a different scope and severity than traditional phone hacking cases. “They’re much more serious, hiring people to put wiretapping devices in homes and cars, conducting live phone tapping, very serious and of a different nature than what we’ve seen before.”

In the case in Tuesday’s High Court, members of the group suing the newspaper publisher allege they are “victims of heinous criminal activity and gross violations of privacy” and that journalists used “unlawful intelligence gathering” to obtain stories.

In the basic argument outlining their case, the group claimed the Associated Newspapers’ efforts went beyond hacking phones and included tapping live calls, accessing private documents such as phone bills or medical records, using private investigators and the Hiring others to break into private property. The group says this happened over a 25-year period from 1993 to 2018.

Associated Newspapers was granted court approval on Monday for a temporary ban on naming the 73 journalists and executives in the lawsuits, arguing that it would violate their right to a fair trial under human rights law. This struck some as strange on social media, as the Daily Mail has long railed against the European Union-derived legislation.

The case is reminiscent of the phone-hacking scandal over a decade ago that rocked the British establishment and saw Rupert Murdoch unplug a best-selling boulevard. It also prompted the Leveson Inquiry, which looked at the culture and ethics of the British press.

For its part, Associated Newspapers has “categorically” denied all allegations and is seeking to drop the case. They argue that the plaintiffs are using information confidentially given to the Leveson investigation and that the events are too ancient and therefore “stale”.

Mark Stephens, a media advocate, said it’s clear Prince Harry and others aren’t in it for the money.

“Usually a case like this is settled with generous sums of money, people are ransomed,” he said.

Harry and others “know they will be at a loss by bringing the case, but they want to know the truth about how information about their personal lives was kept and hold people accountable.”