Prince Harry has just secured a massive legal win, with British tabloids admitting to engaging in illegal practices — including phone hacking — that violated his privacy over a period of decades.
According to The Australian Financial Review, it marks the first time Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers (NGN) has publicly acknowledged wrongdoing at The Sun and comes with a reported £10 million (AUD$19 million) settlement, not to mention a very public apology.
Harry had been suing NGN, publisher of The Sun and the now-defunct News of the World, alleging the papers had illegally obtained private information about him from 1996 till 2011.
He was among dozens of claimants — including actor Hugh Grant — who alleged there had been invasions of privacy such as intercepting voicemails, tapping phones, and bugging cars. However, others have already reached settlements.
Of the original group of claimants against NGN, Harry and Tom Watson, a former member of the UK Parliament, were the last ones set to head to trial.
However, the trial, which was due to kick off on Tuesday, was halted as a result of talks with NGN, where it agreed to an apology and “substantial damages”.
As reported by the Guardian, NGN’s apology, read out in court by Harry’s lawyer, David Sherborne, said it acknowledges its private investigators carried out phone hacking, surveillance, and various forms of unlawful information gathering.
It also apologised for the distress caused through the “extensive coverage” and “serious intrusion” into Harry’s private life and the private life of his late mother, Princess Diana, “particularly during his younger years”.
“Today the lies are laid bare. Today, the cover-ups are exposed. And today proves that no one stands above the law. The time for accountability has arrived,” Sherborne stated.
The settlement and public apology marks a big milestone in Harry’s ongoing fight with the media. The duke has long blamed the press for his mother’s death — his mother Diana was pursued by paparazzi at the time of her fatal car crash in 1997 — and has faced intense scrutiny from tabloids since his teenage years, with everything from his relationships to his struggles with drugs making headlines.
More recently, the media’s treatment of Harry’s wife, Meghan Markle, was a key factor in their decision to step away from royal duties and relocate to the US in 2020.
Battling the Murdoch Empire
This victory is especially notable because it’s the first time NGN has admitted any wrongdoing at The Sun.
Up until now, the publisher had acknowledged malpractice at The News of the World, which was shut down in 2011 following media reports the tabloid’s reporters had hacked the phone of a 13-year-old murdered schoolgirl while the police were searching for her in 2002.
Harry’s lawyer didn’t mince words, describing the settlement as a “monumental victory” and that NGN had been “finally held to account for its illegal actions and its blatant disregard for the law”.
Sherborne added the “truth has now been exposed” that NGN unlawfully engaged over 100 private investigators over at least 16 years on more than 35,000 occasions.
“This happened as much at the Sun as it did at the News of the World, with the knowledge of all the editors and executives, going to the very top of the company,” Sherborne said, per The Guardian.
He continued that senior executives “deliberately obstructed justice by deleting over 30 million emails, destroying backup tapes, and making false denials – all in the face of an ongoing police investigation”.
“At her trial in 2014, Rebekah Brooks, said: ‘When I was editor of the Sun we ran a clean ship.’ Now, 10 years later when she is CEO of the company, they now admit, when she was editor of the Sun, they ran a criminal enterprise.”
It’s worth pointing out NGN’s apology did not directly reference any wrongdoing from its senior figures, or allegations of any cover-ups by current or former executives.
Its apology was “for incidents of unlawful activities carried out by private investigators working for the Sun, not by journalists, during the period 1996-2011”, as reported by the BBC.
“There are strong controls and processes in place at all our titles today to ensure this cannot happen now. There was no voicemail interception on the Sun,” it said.
So what’s next? The Duke of Sussex still has another high-profile legal battle on the horizon — his case against the publisher of The Daily Mail, which includes other claimants like Elton John and Elizabeth Hurley, is still set for trial.
But no doubt we’ll all watch out for what comes next.
Lead image: Carl Court/Getty Images
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