In its defence of the civil court action brought by Prince Harry, Mirror Group Newspapers argued to the death that there was not a shred of evidence to support the Duke of Sussex’s claims of a lifetime of illegal information gathering and phone hacking. “Zilch, zero, nil, de nada, niente, nothing,” Andrew Green KC, the newspapers’ barrister, insisted in summing up. Piers Morgan, Mirror editor for much of the period in question, reiterated that denial – and took the opportunity to double down on his vindictive and blatantly self-serving assault on Harry’s reputation – in a prepared statement for the press on his doorstep on Friday. The damning 386-page judgment of Mr Justice Fancourt, published earlier that morning, tells a very different story, however.
In supporting Harry’s claims, and awarding him £140,600 in damages, it provides an exhaustive catalogue of evidence that “extensive and habitual” unlawful practices went on over a longer period at the Mirror than previously established; that the use of off-the-books private investigators and blaggers and hackers to capture personal details of Harry and his circle – and scores of other high-profile targets – was endemic at the Mirror’s three national titles from 1998 to 2011.
The judgment also makes plain that the Mirror Group’s deletion of phone records and email evidence from the period, and the decision not to call senior editorial staff, including Morgan, to give evidence, must be understood as part of an ongoing culture of cover-up. What went on, the judge told the court, “was concealed from the board, from parliament in 2007 and 2011, from the Leveson inquiry, from shareholders and from the public for years”. Public trust in news, already serially undermined by political and commercial attacks, is again the victim of that denialism. One dangerous consequence of these latest revelations has been renewed calls for legislative oversight of press freedom, which a democracy must always resist.
Despite its denials, Mirror Group has paid out £100m to other litigants in out-of-court settlements. A further raft of cases will now no doubt follow. A previous test case brought by the Coronation Street actress Shobna Gulati established that, even in the absence of a full paper trail, it was clear the illegal practices were “generic” in the papers’ newsrooms from 2001 to 2006. In Mr Justice Fancourt’s assessment, the “generic” period could now extend between 1998 and 2011 – beyond both the arrest and conviction of the News of the World journalist Clive Goodman for similar practices in 2006, and – shockingly – Lord Leveson’s subsequent inquiry into the press.
When Harry first announced, five years ago, that he would make it his “life’s work” to seek justice for his family’s treatment by the tabloids, it was characterised – invariably in those same papers – as a fool’s errand. What his mission might now prove to be, however, is a half-workable replacement for the planned second phase of the Leveson inquiry, which was shamefully abandoned by Matt Hancock as culture secretary in 2018. That phase was due to examine the full extent of unlawful practice across the British press, the ways in which journalistic privileges designed, in all our interests, to hold the powerful and criminal to account in extremis, had been cynically “hijacked” to trade, at an industrial scale, in royal gossip and celebrity private lives.
Harry and others will bring further cases against Associated Newspapers’ Daily Mail and Rupert Murdoch’s Sun. It is to be hoped that the disclosure and defence of those actions may serve finally to establish the exact extent and limits of a culture that has been profoundly damaging to journalistic integrity and to British public life. In their notably scant reports of the judgment – a rare royal story in which they apparently have very little curiosity – neither paper referenced those forthcoming actions. No doubt, however, until the full truth is told, lawyers for both groups will continue to be exercised by little else.
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