She said: “The newspaper is taking great comfort in the fact IPSO have backed them on this occasion.
“They think it might set a precedent for the other case.
“That case, of course, involves letters that Meghan sent to her father Thomas. There is an issue of breach of copyright and privacy.
Having said that, although the couple are insisting they are going to take this case all the way and not agree a settlement out of court, it does have the added complication that Thomas Markle has agreed to testify against his daughter.
“This complicates matters considerably.”
She added: “The question royal watchers will be asking is: was it really necessary to launch this action at all?
“This is kind of a petty complaint about a photograph.
“People can have more sympathy for publishing private correspondence.
“But on this occasion, people might be thinking that the Sussexes have been slightly petty.”
Of the complaint, IPSO said in their ruling: “The article claimed that the ‘pictures… don’t quite tell the full story’ and commented that the complainant notably avoided explaining the circumstances in which the images were taken, namely that all three of the animals had been tranquillised and that the elephant had also been tethered as they were being relocated as part of conservation projects.
“It reported that followers of the complainant’s Instagram account were unable to see a rope around the hind legs of the elephant because of the way the picture was edited.
“The article reported that a spokesperson for the complainant had declined to discuss the photos, though “sources denied the rope was deliberately edited out of the elephant picture, claiming instead that ‘it was due to Instagram’s format’.
“The Committee considered that it was not clear from the images themselves that the animals had been tranquillised and tethered.
“The photograph of the elephant had been cropped to edit out the animal’s tethered leg; the publication had demonstrated that the photograph could have been edited differently and the complainant accepted that the album could have been uploaded in a different format which would have made editing the photograph unnecessary.
“The accompanying caption did not make the position clear or that the images had previously been published, unedited, in 2016. The position was not made clear simply as a result of the inclusion of the link to the website.
“In these circumstances, the Committee did not consider that it was significantly misleading to report that the photographs posted on the complainant’s Instagram account did not quite tell the full story and that the complainant had not explained the circumstances in which the photographs had been taken.”
The statement concluded: “The complaint was not upheld.”
