Never mind waiting for Mr Justice Fancourt to produce his findings, the tabloid newspapers were declaring their collective triumph before Prince Harry had even been released from giving evidence against Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN).
“He must have longed for the schmaltzy embrace of Oprah,” the Mail said; “Me, Hewitt … and that two-faced shit Burrell,” the Sun sort-of quotes the prince. The Mirror went with the more sober “Harry vs the Press”, with only a silent nod to the fact that it is their newspaper group, specifically, he’s been fighting in this week’s hearing.
Harry isn’t the only person chasing the hacking scandal all the way to court: he’s one of four claimants in this trial, along with ex and current Corrie actors Nikki Sanderson and Michael Le Vell, and Fiona Wightman, Paul Whitehouse’s ex-wife. In 2015, a judge ruled in favour of Paul Gascoigne and seven others, awarding £1.2m in compensation. Yet the prince is an object lesson in why people so rarely choose to go to war against the press: it’s like playing a game of football in which the other team is also both referee and commentator. They can make up the rules as they go along, and even after you’ve lost, the game will never, ever end.
Harry’s overall charge is that MGN, whether by phone hacking, obtaining information by deception, or employing private investigators who used illegal methods, has been trashing his reputation since before he could read newspapers (some poetic licence there, as I have no idea when he learned to read; but thanks to the tabloids’ narrative, in which he’s portrayed as – in his words – a “thicko” and a “drug taker”, I’m guessing about 17?). His day in court came and it went; it will be adjudicated in due course, and then it will be over; but I think it doubtful that the tabloids will ever, whether in concert or one at a time, stop trashing his reputation. He tried to put this fire out with petrol.
Yet the other problem is correctly identified by the Mail: court is not the place to go with a moral case, and it’s not the right precinct for dealing with feelings, however profound and justified they are. In its literal-minded way, it requires a law to have demonstrably been broken. The exchange I found most telling was this one, with Andrew Green KC, acting for MGN: “Do you think the absence of call data suggests you were not hacked by any MGN journalist?” Green asked.
“Absolutely not,” Harry said. “If the court finds that you were not hacked by MGN would you be relieved or disappointed?” He replied that since hacking was everywhere, he’d “feel some injustice” if his claim wasn’t accepted.
He says, but can’t prove, that journalists were all using burner phones, and that’s why there are no records; he says information could only have come from his phone, but of course can’t prove the absence of “royal sources” or friends of girlfriends that MGN says were in fact providing its intel; he needs a case specific to the Mirror, since you can’t put “tabloid culture” in the dock, and yet on multiple occasions, the publisher was able to show that his personal information was already in the public domain. It may have arrived there through other papers’ hacking, but that would just be a piquant detail and would do nothing to strengthen Harry’s case.
He’s not wrong to “feel some injustice” – without question, this country’s media culture, and its labile relationship with the royals, craven one minute, insatiable and crowing the next, has changed his life. Few characters could have withstood seeing every failed relationship, every misadventure, immediately in the spotlight. I don’t have any real doubt that racist dog-whistling, in some sections of the media, made his life in the UK untenable after his marriage. And that’s all to put aside the death of his mother, for which he holds press intrusion squarely responsible. But because it’s a culture, rather than a single news organisation, firing-squad rules apply: it is exceedingly difficult to pinpoint the individual gun, let alone find it still smoking. All he’s really been able to show are the exit wounds.
Which makes me wonder whether that wasn’t the point all along, whether he came to court because, win or lose, the sheer impact of a royal in the witness box would make the statement that previous attempts – the Netflix documentary, the memoir – have only partially landed: that they may be royal, but they’re still human, and it’s wrong to treat them like zoo animals. I don’t know if that statement will ever land, or whether the value proposition of royalty evaporates once you start insisting on the ordinary flesh and blood of which it is composed.
Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
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