Prince Harry says 'vile' press coverage led to depression in rare royal court testimony
Reuters | Posted: June 6, 2023 9:57 AM | Last Updated: June 7, 2023
Harry, suing the Mirror Group, is expected back on the stand Wednesday after 5-hour session
Prince Harry launched a fierce attack on the "vile" press on Tuesday, blaming tabloids for destroying his adolescence and later relationships, as he gave evidence for almost five hours in his lawsuit against a tabloid publisher.
Harry, the fifth in line to the throne, briefly smiled as he passed the phalanx of waiting photographers and camera crews when he arrived to court in central London. He and more than 100 others are suing Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN), the publisher of the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and Sunday People, over allegations of widespread wrongdoing between 1991 and 2011.
The younger son of King Charles faced cross-examination in the witness box from Andrew Green, MGN's lawyer, over 33 newspaper articles he says were based on information that had been unlawfully obtained. Green has said he plans to question Harry for about a day and a half.
Green began by personally apologizing to Harry on his client's behalf over one instance in which MGN previously admitted unlawful information gathering.
"It should never have happened and it will not happen again," he said, adding if the court agreed MGN had committed wrongdoing on other occasions "you will be entitled to, and you will receive a more extensive apology."
In his 50-page written witness statement and during cross-examination from Green, the younger son of King Charles said he had been targeted since 1996 when he was a schoolboy.
Harry said the press would try to destroy his relationships with girlfriends, blaming them for his break-up with Chelsy Davy, for causing his circle of friends to shrink, and for bouts of depression and paranoia.
He said he had been labelled a "playboy prince," a "thicko," a "failure" and a "dropout."
"Looking back on it now, such behaviour on their part is utterly vile," he wrote, saying the tabloids had incited "hatred and harassment" into his and his wife Meghan's private lives.
Accused of speculating on tabloid sources, methods
In another section, Harry said: "How much more blood will stain their typing fingers before someone can put a stop to this madness?"
Asked by Green if he was suggesting MGN journalists who wrote the articles at the centre of his lawsuit had blood on their hands, Harry replied: "Some of the editors and journalists that are responsible for causing a lot of pain, upset and in some cases — perhaps inadvertently — death."
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The lawyer then forensically and with increasing hostility quizzed the prince over 33 newspaper articles, whose details Harry claims were obtained unlawfully.
The lawyer intimated that the distress Harry had suffered was caused by press coverage in general, not the specific MGN stories, and suggested they were based on information already in the public domain.
Green said his allegation an article about him breaking his thumb as a teenager was the result of phone-hacking, or other unlawful activity, was "in the realms of total speculation."
When asked about the source of information for articles at the centre of his lawsuit, Harry repeatedly said that question should be asked of the journalist who wrote them, saying the origins appeared suspicious.
Harry is the first British royal to give evidence in 130 years. An ancestor, the future King Edward VII, appeared as a witness in a trial over a gambling scandal in 1891.
He will be back on Wednesday to give more evidence.
State of U.K. press, government 'at rock bottom'
At least one comment from the stand may garner attention from the Conservative government at Westminster.
"Our country is judged globally by the state of our press and our government — both of which I believe are at rock bottom," he said.
The MGN trial began last month, with lawyers for Harry and the other claimants seeking to prove that unlawful information gathering was carried out with the knowledge and approval of senior editors and executives.
Harry is one of four test cases, and his specific allegations form the focus of the first three days of this week.
Not a vendetta, Harry's lawyer says
Harry's lawyer David Sherborne said on Monday that the prince had been the subject of thousands of MGN stories since he was a young boy, and as such was a regular target of unlawful behaviour, with his late mother, Princess Diana, also a victim of hacking.
Asked if he remembered reading the first story he had complained about, an article about his mother visiting him for his 12th birthday, Harry said: "I was a child, I was at school, these articles were incredibly invasive. Every time one of these articles were written it had an effect."
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Harry wants to focus attention on the unlawful activities, but not because he has a "vendetta" against the press, Sherborne has said.
In his memoir Spare, Netflix documentary series and other TV interviews, the prince has repeatedly accused his family and their aides of colluding with tabloids to enhance their reputations at his expense.
Harry also has outstanding lawsuits with other tabloid publishers. His wife, Meghan Markle, has also fought back against the tabloids, winning a privacy case against Associated Newspapers, publisher of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday and the Mail Online, for printing a letter she had written to her estranged father.
MGN, now owned by Reach, did apologize at the start of the trial after admitting the Sunday People had unlawfully sought information about Harry on one occasion, and has previously admitted its titles were involved in phone-hacking, settling more than 600 claims.
But Green, MGN's lawyer, said there was no evidence that Harry had ever been the victim of phone-hacking, let alone habitually as he claimed, and rejected he had been the victim of any further unlawful actions.
The publisher also argues that some of the personal information involved had come from senior royal aides, including from one of his father's former top officials.