Six years ago, as he and his American wife Meghan were seemingly enjoying a hugely successful royal tour to Africa, Prince Harry issued a surprise, stinging rebuke to the British press, accusing papers of waging a ruthless campaign against them.
“Put simply, it is bullying, which scares and silences people,” his statement said. “We all know this isn’t acceptable, at any level. We won’t and can’t believe in a world where there is no accountability for this.”
It marked the start of the prince’s mission to take on those in the media world he accuses of destroying people’s lives with impunity – one which led him to leave his royal role, become ostracised from his father King Charles and the rest of his family, and to face a barrage of criticism.
By obtaining a full apology from Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers along with an admission for the first time of unlawful behaviour by its Sun tabloid towards him and his late mother, Princess Diana, Harry basked on Wednesday in what he called a “monumental victory”.
“Today the lies are laid bare. Today, the cover-ups are exposed. And today proves that no one stands above the law,” he said in a statement with his joint claimant, former senior British lawmaker Tom Watson.
Unlike other claimants who accepted payouts from newspaper groups to avoid the risk of a multi-million-pound legal bill, Harry had refused to settle, forcing Murdoch’s group to make an apology, meaning there was no full trial.
Through a variety of court cases, both criminal and civil, British publishers have admitted that in the late 1990s and early 2000s, British tabloids unlawfully targeted thousands of victims, hacking their voicemails, and obtaining personal information by deception.
In 2023, Harry won a case against Mirror Group Newspapers, publisher of three British tabloids, with the judge ruling his phone had been hacked and that senior editors had known.