Prince Harry spent nearly five hours on the witness stand on Tuesday, voicing his longstanding displeasure with Britain’s notoriously unbridled tabloids.
It was Harry’s first day testifying in the lawsuit he and three other plaintiffs have filed in London against Mirror Group Newspapers, whom he accuses of waging a long-standing war on his family’s privacy, including through phone hacking .
His testimony is to be continued on Wednesday. Here are the highlights from Day 1.
Actually Prince Harry dislikes the British news media.
This may not come as a surprise. His battle with the tabloids had been going on for years, after all, so we knew where Harry was coming from. But lest there be any doubt, in written testimony to reporters and editors Tuesday, he said, “How much more blood will stain their typing fingers before anyone can put a stop to this madness.”
He called their behavior “absolutely despicable” and “criminal,” explaining how it affected him personally: “Their actions affected every area of my life.” The tabloid coverage, he said, triggered “bouts of depression and paranoia.” And to further his lawsuit, he said, he was “forced to relive a horrible time in my life.”
The prince is an experienced witness.
The last time a royal was cross-examined in a UK courtroom is probably 1891, but that doesn’t seem to bother Harry. He kept a cool head and concentrated and answered difficult questions with confidence.
“Would it be fair to say that you have long harbored animosity towards the press for invading your life?” He was asked once at the beginning of the hearing. “Yes, that’s right,” Prince Harry replied. Despite intense criticism from Mirror Group lawyer Andrew Green, Harry appeared gentle, measured, precise and unwilling to speculate. At one point he looked at the judge with a clear intensity in his face and voice as he spoke of the distress these stories had caused.
His testimony was deeply personal.
In his testimony, Harry complained that members of the royal family were being cast in predetermined roles by the tabloids. “You’re either the ‘playboy prince,’ the ‘loser,’ the ‘dropout,’ or, in my case, the ‘thicko,’ the ‘cheater,’ the ‘underage drinker,’ the ‘irresponsible drug user.'” the list goes on,” he wrote.
This person overshadowed his life, he said. Whenever he entered a room, he was “confronted with judgments and opinions based on what was being reported about me, whether true or not.” When he was younger, he said, “he expected people to think: ‘He’s obviously not going to pass that test because he’s an idiot.'”
Even when the news was positive, like when he passed a military exam, the story had an edge. “It feels as if the tabloids were looking at every opportunity for a way to lift me up and then take me down.” Press intrusion was “the main factor” in ending his relationship with Chelsy Davy, a former girlfriend, been, he said. More recently, he said, he and his wife Meghan have faced “a spate of horrific personal attacks.”
Harry wants people to see the bigger picture.
The British tabloids must be held accountable, Harry said. “My view is: how can anyone trust a media organization that enjoys the freedoms of the free press when their own legal representatives and board of directors are covering up the truth?” he asked. “Even the police and the government are afraid to hold them accountable or seek justice against them. They can really believe that they are above the law,” he said.
In discussing the specific violations at the heart of the lawsuit, Harry cited details cited in a litany of articles that he said could only be explained by phone hacking or other forms of illegal intelligence gathering. He recalls his whereabouts being suspiciously known to the paparazzi, including when he was picking up Ms. Davy at the airport or visiting a nightclub. He recalled how sometimes the voicemail icon on his phone would disappear before he could listen to the message, and how friends would ask him if he had heard voicemail messages he had never seen.
The Mirror says suspicion is not proof.
The editor claims the prince has not presented any hard evidence of phone hacking. Some of the articles in question were published before the prince had a phone, his lawyer, who told Prince Harry, argued that as much as he sympathized with the disturbing press intrusion, “it doesn’t necessarily follow that it was.” “ Result of an illegal activity.”
Mr Green spent much of Tuesday examining the stories Prince Harry had cited and pointed to other possible explanations for how detailed information got to reporters – including tips, information from friends or aides, other press reports or just plain official statements from Buckingham Palace.
The lawyer even cited “Spare,” the prince’s own memoir, to refute Harry’s claim that the story about his drug use may have been illegal. Referring to the book, Mr Green argued that the details contained in at least one story may have stemmed from a Buckingham Palace “game” with the tabloids, using his own words against him.
There were new insights into the royal family’s dispute.
Years before retiring from his official duties, Harry feared his place in the royal family would be undermined. In his testimony, he cited articles based on the rumor that his birth father was James Hewitt, a former cavalry officer and lover of Princess Diana.
At the time, he wrote, “he didn’t really know that my mother hadn’t met Major Hewitt until after I was born,” and he called the reports “hurting, mean, and cruel.” But he also added: “I’ve always questioned the motivations behind the stories. Did the newspapers want to raise doubts in the public, so that I might be ousted from the royal family?”
In another sense, the statement implied that the press is not the only British institution Harry despises. The prince does not appear to be a fan of the current British government, which is led by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. “Right now,” Harry wrote, “the world as a whole is measuring our country by the state of our press and our government – both of which are, I think, at rock bottom.”
Megan Specia contributed to the reporting.
