Prince Harry became the first senior British royal to testify on a witness stand in 132 years as his fight against the UK press came to a head in a tense courtroom showdown on Tuesday.
Harry answered the questions in a measured, almost hushed tone. He seemed nervous at first, and at one point he was asked to raise his voice.
However, the Duke of Sussex took to court a paramount argument he has made in television shows and podcast interviews: that media intrusion and tactics caused him significant distress and destroyed some of his closest relationships.
The Duke is suing a major British newspaper group, Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN), alleging that journalists at the publisher hacked into his phone and used other illicit means to gather information about his life between 1996 and 2009.
Harry faced forensic and detailed questioning from MGN attorney Andrew Green, who probed him for the details of his claims and occasionally left him struggling to recall sections of his written statement or find evidence.
After a nervous start that exposed gaps in Harry’s knowledge of the minutiae of the case, the prince increasingly asserted himself – clashing at times with his lawyer as they dissected press coverage of his childhood, his school years and his relationships.
“Some editors and journalists have blood on their hands” for the suffering caused to him, Harry told the court at one point – and “perhaps, inadvertently, death”, he added, referring to his mother, Princess Diana.
The sight of a senior noble subjected to grueling and meticulous interrogation was extremely rare. This last happened in 1891, when a baccarat game went wrong and put Harry’s great-great grandfather, the future King Edward VII, in the booth.
But Tuesday’s appearance was another unprecedented reminder that Harry is carving his own path away from his relatives – and trying to come to terms with his tumultuous royal life.
Harry’s “anguish” at the hands of the press
Tuesday’s court session covered dozens of excerpts from Harry’s youth, repeated aloud in court as the prince and MGN’s lawyer pored over the details of various news stories.
Harry’s diagnosis with the “kissing disease”, also known as mono; your teenage pub crawls; his broken thumb and a back injury sustained in a polo game; his gap year afternoons at the beach; and Princess Diana’s trips to pick him up from school – all have been the subject of stories presented in evidence, and each has been dissected by solicitor Andrew Green and the Duke.
In all, the prince alleges that around 140 articles published in titles belonging to the Mirror Group contained information collected by illegal methods, and 33 of these articles were selected to be considered at the trial.
In court on Tuesday, Harry said “every article has caused me anguish”.
“All of these articles played a major role – a destructive role – in my growth,” said Harry. The newspapers in question were constantly on display “in all the palaces, unfortunately” as he grew up. At school, classmates and others read the articles, he said. Harry described the level of coverage as “incredibly invasive”.
Andrew Green began by trying to establish whether Harry remembered reading the articles in question at the time of publication. When the Duke admitted that he couldn’t always remember, Green pressed him on how he could realistically argue that they could have affected him so strongly.
More details in Harry’s witness statement
In a written statement filed with the court, Harry expressed concern that his conversations with family and friends may have been intercepted.
He noted that he and his brother Prince William “naturally discussed personal aspects of our lives as we trust each other with the private information we share.”
Harry said private information about his life was gleaned from voicemails left on the phones of his father Charles and mother Diana.
Harry also said he would discuss “private and sensitive matters about our family and personal lives” in voicemails left on Kate Middleton’s phone. The Duke listed several other friends he kept in touch with, including the late TV presenter Caroline Flack.
He said he recalled “unusual mobile activity” related to his voicemails which he discarded at the time but now claims was caused by phone hackers.
“I remember hearing on several occasions a voicemail for the first time that was not ‘new,’” he wrote. “I would simply chalk it up to perhaps a technical glitch, as cell phones were still relatively new at the time, or even having too much to drink the night before (and forgetting I had heard it).”
Duque claims that the press would try to destroy his relationships
Also in his written statement, Harry argued that the press actively tried to ruin his relationships.
“I always felt that the tabloids wanted me to be single because I was much more interesting to them and sold more newspapers. Although they, of course, reported my successes in life, it seemed to me that they took much more pleasure in knocking me down, over and over again,” she said.
Harry claimed that the press would do this task putting “strain” on his relationships and creating distrust between him and his partners. He regularly spoke about one of his ex-girlfriends, Chelsy Davy, claiming that journalists would find out her flight details to photograph her at airports and book rooms in the same hotels as the couple when they are on vacation.
The Duke evidently believes it has remained that way since his marriage to Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. “This twisted goal is still pursued to this day even though I am married,” he wrote.
Harry accused of ‘total speculation’
The atmosphere in court was occasionally tense.
“Aren’t we, Prince Harry, in the realm of total speculation,” Green asked Harry at one point, after an exchange of stories about the teen prince breaking his thumb. Green questioned the Duke about what specific illicit means of newsgathering Harry was alleging.
Earlier in the morning, when discussing Harry’s use of a landline to reach his mother from school, Harry suggested that either that phone or Diana’s could have been hacked.
“That’s just speculation you’ve created now,” Andrew Green said in response.
The exchanges between Harry and Green finally settled into a predictable pattern; when a new article was published, Green would press Harry on how he could know that the information was obtained illegally rather than through typical means.
Harry often responded that he couldn’t understand how the information would have made it to the papers without illicit involvement, and repeatedly stated that the journalists who wrote the stories, not the subjects of the stories, should answer questions about their source.
A strange appearance of a media-trained prince
There were moments during the back-and-forth between Harry and Green when the prince seemed uncomfortable or oblivious to the minutiae of their affair.
At one point, Harry joked that he was being subjected to “practice” by having to repeatedly pick up packets of evidence, stacked in folders beside him.
Green offered to arrange for someone to help the Prince navigate the evidence, and Harry would often respond “if you say so” when Green sought to establish details of the articles the Prince’s staff entered into the evidence.
After a brief mid-morning recess, the judge asked Harry to raise his voice to ensure he could be heard throughout the courtroom, telling the duke that several observers in the courtroom had difficulty hearing him.
The questioning was far more intense and detailed than anything Harry has experienced in the many television and podcast interviews he has given on the topic of press intrusion.
Green sought to find a number of holes in Harry’s argument, including that the Duke was initially unaware of several specific stories, or that the details in those stories could not have come from hackers as they had already been reported by other media.
Source: CNN Brasil
Bruce Belcher is a seasoned author with over 5 years of experience in world news. He writes for online news websites and provides in-depth analysis on the world stock market. Bruce is known for his insightful perspectives and commitment to keeping the public informed.
