Prince Harry’s account of his family fearing the British tabloid press ignores the fact his brother and palace staff reported Rupert Murdoch‘s journalists to the police for phone hacking and got two people sent to prison.
The Duke of Sussex is suing three different newspaper groups in the United Kingdom on historic allegations of phone hacking and illegal practices, including the publisher of The Sun and the now-defunct News of the World.
Harry issued a nearly 17,000-word witness statement containing a highly charged account of an all-powerful media that was undermining British democracy.
The filing, seen by Newsweek, also argued his family came to a “secret agreement” with the Murdoch empire and that his brother took a large sum of money to go “quietly” while his father King Charles III urged him to scrap his lawsuits.
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It all adds to his telling Oprah Winfrey that there is a “level of control” because the royals are “fearful of what the papers are going to say about them.”
However, his family has stood up to the media before, not least of all when Prince William and palace staff reported the News of the World‘s royal editor, Clive Goodman, to the police, leading to a four-month jail sentence for phone hacking.
Prince Harry Says the Royals Fear the Tabloids
Harry told Oprah Winfrey his family was controlled by the tabloid press due to their fear of negative publicity and were engaged in an “invisible contract” to provide access in exchange for positive publicity.
“For so many in my family,” he said, “what they do is …there’s a level of control in it, right? Because they’re fearful of what the papers are going to say about them.”
“I think everyone needs to have some compassion for them in that situation, right? There is a level of control by fear that has existed for generations. I mean, generations.”
Harry added: “One of the most telling parts—and the saddest parts, I guess—was over 70 members of Parliament, female members of Parliament, both Conservative and Labour—came out and called out the colonial undertones of articles and headlines written about Meghan.
“Yet no one from my family ever said anything over those three years,” he said. “And that hurts. But I also am acutely aware of where my family stands and how scared they are of the tabloids turning on them.”
In a witness statement for his current case, Harry also argued that Charles’ staff blocked his efforts to seek compensation from Murdoch as part of a campaign to make his wife, Camilla, the queen consort.
“With hindsight,” Harry wrote, “I now understand why staff at Clarence House were being so unhelpful and were seemingly blocking our every move, as they had a specific long-term strategy to keep the media (including NGN) onside 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 and anything that might upset the applecart in this regard (including the suggestion of resolution of our phone hacking claims) was to be avoided at all costs.”
In his book Spare, Harry gave a similar account of being sacrificed on Camilla’s PR altar as part of a campaign to mend her public image, damaged by her affair with Charles behind Princess Diana‘s back.
However, the royal family has taken on the media before and won, and survived with their reputations intact—even in the aftermath of Charles and Camilla’s wedding, a highly sensitive period on her path to rehabilitation.
Meanwhile, Harry has waged a legal war on multiple fronts that is yet to yield the impact of Prince William’s. And during the last four years, it is Harry’s reputation that tanked.
Prince William Exposes Phone Hacking at the News of the World
Tabloid journalists in Britain previously engaged in what has been described as industrial-scale phone hacking targeting what the police would later estimate to be more than 1,000 likely victims and another 3,675 potential ones.
Yet, back in 2005, the public knew nothing about this practice until a seemingly innocuous story in the News of the World‘s “Blackadder” column said Prince William had borrowed some camera equipment from his friend, Tom Bradby.
Bradby contacted William to suggest the story might have come from phone hacking, a practice he had heard of through his work as a journalist.
A court filing by NGN, the newspaper’s publisher, reads: “The Duke of Cambridge, Tom Bradby and Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton (Private Secretary to the Dukes of Cambridge and Sussex) agreed that further action had to be taken.”
It then emerged multiple palace staff were experiencing problems with their voicemails, as was Prince Harry.
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The palace lawyer was consulted, who agreed that phone hacking was the likely explanation. A decision was made to report the crime to the police.
A court filing, seen by Newsweek, read: “In around mid-December 2005, Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton [aide to William and Harry] reported the following concerns of the Royal Household to Commander Peter Loughborough as follows: (a) Suspicious activity associated with his mobile phone, in the form of voicemail messages registered as “old messages” i.e., previously listened to, which he knew he had not heard before.
“(b) An apparent link between the content of voicemail messages left on his mobile phone and subsequent press reporting in the News of the World.”
As a result, Clive Goodman, the newspaper’s royal editor, and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire were arrested, pleaded guilty and jailed for voicemail interception, proving illegal activity had taken place.
From this starting point, The Guardian newspaper would later investigate more widespread use of the practice, ultimately causing a scandal seismic enough to close a seemingly untouchable Sunday tabloid feared by the rich and famous across British society.
In other words, William got accountability and justice and toppled the first domino in a chain that transformed British journalism, eliminating phone hacking as a practice in the media.
And it all came at a time when King Charles was also suing The Mail on Sunday for publishing a leaked excerpt from his diary, a case he won in March 2006.
In other words, the royals did stand up to the media long before Harry’s legal crusade against the press began, and they both won. Not only that, but it all unfolded in the months after Charles married Camilla, bringing her into the light as an official working royal.
Prince Harry’s Approach During the Phone Hacking Scandal
Notably, in Harry’s witness statement, he does not appear to play a significant role in this process: “The first time that I was made aware of anything to do with phone hacking was when my brother asked me whether I had received a voicemail that he had left for me on my mobile in which he pretended to be [Harry’s ex-girlfriend] Chelsy [Davy].”
Some months later, Lowther-Pinkerton told him the phones of staff had been hacked and the message from William “had also been intercepted by Goodman,” Harry said.
However, this news does not appear to have led to a penny-drop moment in which the prince fully grasped the fact he was a phone-hacking victim with a need to get justice.
He stated that “there was no mention of any other voicemails being intercepted that had been left for or by me, my brother or indeed any other member of my family” and adds, “it’s not particularly surprising that senior members of the institution chose not to discuss this with me in any detail, especially as I was considered to be the younger, ‘irresponsible’ brother.”
However, he had, at that moment, been given more information than Prince William got from Bradby some months earlier, which had triggered the older royal to ask his staff for action.
Harry by contrast said in his statement that he was not following the phone hacking scandal closely but became suddenly more interested in media accountability after meeting Meghan.
“How I was back then is vastly different to how I am now, in terms of my knowledge of what the tabloids report on and why,” Harry wrote. “It is only since my wife has suffered so greatly at the hands of the tabloid press over the last six years, that I have taken such an interest in what has been written about her, due to the sheer astonishment of what they get away with. The two periods are therefore in stark contrast and cannot be used for any meaningful comparison.”
Prince Harry Wakes Up and Seeks Justice
To whatever extent Harry gives off the impression he was a passenger in his own life back in 2005 and the years after, he certainly developed a different attitude after meeting Meghan in 2016.
By 2018, he was seeking compensation for phone hacking via palace staff who approached Rebekah Brooks, then chief executive of the publisher now known as News U.K.
A newfound urgency is visible in emails that implored staff to chase Murdoch executives for a resolution and contemplated banning The Sun from his 2018 royal wedding. He also won support from Queen Elizabeth II for seeking compensation.
One major difference, though, between Prince Harry’s approach and William and Charles’ is the packaging he gives his broadsides at the media.
William’s phone hacking reports were clean and simple with the prosecutions confined to the hacking of staff phones in order to keep the most embarrassing private information out of the press. They earned guilty pleas at a criminal court in under a year.
Charles won his lawsuit over extracts from his diary in March 2006 swiftly through summary judgment and ensured he would not have to take the stand. They went in, won accountability, and got out with their reputations intact, whereas Harry appears to prefer to amplify the public spectacle.
His witness statement reads: “I fully accept and agree with the fact that journalists and the media own the public square, in as much as, if you are in a position of responsibility and or are funded by the tax-payer, the media should have the power to be able to investigate anyone, anytime, for pretty much anything.
“The problem is that, over the last 15 to 20 years, there are now incredibly powerful ‘news’ media companies who masquerade as journalists and who have, quite literally, hijacked journalistic privileges and power for their own personal gain and agenda.
“If you’re in the public square, they make you fair game. It’s an unbelievably dangerous place,” he wrote, adding: “There is nowhere to hide.”
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Harry does not have to agree with the approach of his brother and father but he does have to acknowledge that they both took on the media and won.
Not only that, but they did it in the delicate months after Charles and Camilla’s February 2005 wedding, when it might be expected they would be extra careful not to “upset the applecart,” as Harry described it.
Yet the royals did not stand up for Meghan during a wave of media hostility while she was a working royal.
They have never said why but Harry’s argument that they should have operated out of his own playbook would be stronger if his own popularity had not been devastated in the years after he quit the palace.
Harry’s four-year media war has taken place against the backdrop of a plunging public approval rating which in Britain stood at -44 in January 2023, when William was on +49, according to YouGov.
Charles was on +33 and even Camilla, who has always struggled with popularity, was on +6 days after a broadside from Harry in his book Spare.
In November 2019, Harry was on +51 in the last set of YouGov polling before he announced his decision to quit the palace in January 2020.
Jack Royston is chief royal correspondent for Newsweek, based in London. You can find him on Twitter at @jack_royston and read his stories on Newsweek‘s The Royals Facebook page.
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