Prince Harry’s legal battle against two British tabloids – The Sun and the long-closed News of the World – comes to a head this week when his claims against them come to trial. This is the first time that News Group Newspapers (NGN) has had to defend itself against allegations of unlawful news gathering techniques at a corporate-level, a stark contrast to its defense that phone hacking was limited to bad apples in one now-closed title. If Prince Harry wins, a finding from the court would imply corporate-level wrongdoing and may define both his legacy and the future of British journalism.
The legal battle began in 1996 when Prince Harry’s allegations of tabloid wrongdoing first emerged. In 2006, Prince Harry and his brother Prince William began suspecting that they may have been targeted by the media. In the same year, Clive Goodman, a News of the World journalist, and Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator, were arrested and later sentenced for intercepting voicemails on phones belonging to the princes’ aides. Prince Harry says as the scandal deepened, he held on for NGN to settle Royal Family claims under a ‘secret agreement’ to avoid embarrassment in court. However, NGN’s lawyers have denied the existence of any such backroom deal.
The trial will investigate Prince Harry’s claim that over 200 articles published by NGN between 1996 and 2011 contained information gathered by unlawful means. Some of the stories include scoops such as “Emotional Harry rang Chelsy at midnight” – a story about his then-girlfriend published by The Sun almost ten years ago to the day. While the hit to Prince Harry’s wallet will be significant, the damage to NGN’s reputation would be greater if the court finds that its executives were involved in a corporate-wide cover-up of illegal practices. The executives accused of wrongdoing, including current CEO Rebekah Brooks, deny the allegations
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