Prince Harry targeted for standing up to UK newspaper – Lawyer says

Prince Harry faced a “sustained campaign of attacks” for challenging Britain’s powerful Daily Mail over alleged intrusion into his private life, his lawyer told the High Court on Tuesday, January 20, as the Duke of Sussex and six others pursue claims of unlawful information gathering against the paper’s publisher, Associated Newspapers.

Harry, 41, and fellow claimants, including Elton John, David Furnish, Liz Hurley, Sadie Frost, Doreen Lawrence and former MP Simon Hughes, accuse Associated of violating their privacy over more than two decades from the early 1990s. The allegations include hacking voicemail messages, bugging landlines and securing confidential information through deception, known as “blagging”.

Associated denies the claims, calling them smears and insisting its journalists used legitimate sources drawn from “gossipy social circles,” contacts and press officers. “The claims are without any foundation,” the company wrote in submissions, arguing they relied on “spurious or discredited information from private investigators.”

Harry’s lawyer David Sherborne said that “no one sold more copies” for UK tabloids than the prince, citing intense press scrutiny of his private life, particularly in the years before he met his wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. The stories, Sherborne argued, homed in “in a highly intrusive and damaging way on the relationships which he formed, or rather tried to form,” with 14 specific articles highlighted, ranging from details about travel plans and relationships to claims about being asked to be godfather to his former nanny’s child and intimate information involving former girlfriend Chelsy Davy.

Sherborne said the coverage caused Harry “distress and paranoia,” adding: “Given what we’ve seen, is it any wonder that he feels that way or, as he explains, that he feels he has endured a sustained campaign of attacks against him for having had the temerity to stand up to Associated?”

For Harry, the case forms part of what has become a personal crusade against the media. The prince, who lost his mother Diana in 1997 during a pursuit by paparazzi, has long been a staple of the British press, from reports on partying and girlfriends to family tensions and his eventual move to the United States.

Over nine weeks of hearings, Harry, John and the other claimants will give evidence about how they believe investigators acquired information unlawfully on behalf of journalists. Sherborne alleged that in Elton John and Furnish’s case, the Mail had “obtained a copy of their son’s birth certificate before they did” for a 2010 article about the couple having a child through surrogacy in the United States. Associated denies any unlawful acquisition.

Harry is expected to give evidence in person on Thursday. In 2023, he became the first British royal to appear in a witness box in more than 130 years during litigation against another tabloid group.