Prince Harry said that his father interfered because he had a “specific long-term strategy to keep the media on his side” for “when the time came” and wanted to make sure that the Sun backed his ascent to the throne and Camilla’s position as queen consort.
The charges were made on Tuesday by the Duke of Sussex as part of his continuing legal battle with News Group Newspapers. Harry’s claims about the agreements between senior members of the British royal family and tabloid publications are made clear by the judicial proceeding.
When the lawsuits were filed in late 2019, the prince claimed his father, the monarch, had personally urged him to withdraw them.
According to the court documents, “I was summoned to Buckingham Palace and specifically told to drop the legal actions because they have an ‘effect on all the family’.” This was “a direct request (or rather demand) from my father” and key royal advisers, he said.
Harry attributed gaps in his mental health to tabloid press interference, claimed that many of his relationships with partners had been wrecked by journalists, and claimed that British tabloid journalists were responsible for internet trolling and the death of many individuals. How much more blood will be on their typing fingers before this lunacy is stopped, he questioned.
The duke also said that his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, made the decision to go without a police escort in response to journalistic intrusion by the Sun and other publications, which eventually contributed to her death in 1997.
In 2017, Harry made the decision to ask Murdoch’s News UK for an apology for phone hacking, and he had the support of Queen Elizabeth II and his brother. “William was very understanding and supportive and agreed that we needed to do it,” he said in his proposal. Therefore, he advised that I ask “granny” for her consent. I got on the phone with her soon after and asked: “Are you happy for me to push this forward, do I have your permission?,” to which she replied: “Yes.”
Harry said that after receiving Queen Elizabeth II’s backing, he ordered the royal family’s solicitors to write to Rebekah Brooks and Robert Thomson of Murdoch to request a settlement. In desperation, Harry considered excluding journalists from Murdoch-owned newspapers from attending his wedding to Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, but the business refused to issue an apology.
Sally Osman, the communications director for Queen Elizabeth II, said in an email to Harry in 2018 that she was prepared to threaten legal action on behalf of the queen. The queen had authorized the sending of a follow-up email to News Corporation CEO Robert Thomson and News UK CEO Rebekah Brooks.
“Her Majesty has approved the wording, which basically states that there is growing annoyance at their lack of engagement and response and, although we’ve tried to settle without involving lawyers, we will need to reconsider our stance unless we receive a workable proposal.”
There was no apology, however, which Harry attributes to a covert agreement between the royal family and top Murdoch executives to avoid going to court. He said in court that Murdoch’s business had surreptitiously paid his brother, Prince William, a “huge sum of money” in 2020 to resolve an unreported phone-hacking issue.
Harry asserted that just prior to his wedding, he was informed that Murdoch’s organization would not apologize to the queen and the rest of the royal family at that time because “they would have to admit that not only was the News of the World involved in phone hacking, but also the Sun,” which they “couldn’t afford to do” as it would undermine their ongoing denials that illegal activity occurred at the Sun.
The Sun’s sister publication, the now-defunct News of the World, was the only site where phone hacking and unlawful bagging of personal information occurred, according to Murdoch’s firm, which has always denied that any criminal activity occurred there.
Harry maintains that this is incorrect and asserts that phone hacking was pervasive at the Sun while Brooks, a current top Murdoch employee, was its editor. He has said that he is prepared to testify in court to try to establish this. Murdoch’s firm disputes that there was any misconduct at The Sun or that the media group and the royal family had a covert agreement over phone hacking.
The prince said that his mother’s suspicion of individuals around her for selling information to publications like the Sun was “one of the reasons she insisted on not having any protection after the divorce” due to press interference in her life. “She would probably still be alive today if she had police protection with her in August 1997,” he asserts. People who misuse their positions of authority in this way must bear the repercussions of their conduct; otherwise, it would imply that such behavior is acceptable for everyone.
Harry now feels that rather than supporting his legal claims, his father and royal courtiers gave favorable coverage of his father and Camilla in the Sun first priority. They “had a specific long-term strategy to keep the media onside, including [Sun publisher] NGN,” he said, “in order to smooth the way for my stepmother (and father) to be accepted by the British public as queen consort (and king respectively) when the time came.” Anything (even the idea of resolving our phone-hacking accusations) that would upset the applecart in this respect had to be avoided at all costs.
He predicted that all of his women would experience episodes of sadness and paranoia upon discovering that “they are not just in a relationship with me but with the entire tabloid press as a third party.” He stated that the media was trying to cause “a total and very public breakdown” via him.
He expressed his abhorrence for Brooks, who a jury found not responsible for phone hacking in June 2014. “I felt this surprise at her acquittal even more personally,” the man said. “I had met her once with my father when she was hosting the Sun military awards at the Imperial War Museum in London and had seen her essentially masquerading as someone that she wasn’t by using the military community to try and cover up all the appalling things that she and her newspapers had done.”