Prince Harry gets emotional in court - The Latest

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:12I think this is really important for Harry he wants to have his day in court and a big part of this is the optics of turning up in the court, facing them down Harry, are you feeling confident? Good luck sir Prince Harry has indeed arrived at the High Court in London at his case against the publisher of the Daily Mail On one side of the battlefield is Prince Harry and six of this country's most famous celebrities. I think you've got to really see this in the full context of Harry as a life lived in front of a camera lens, as a life lived and played out in newspapers, right? It's well known that Harry thinks that newspapers were partly responsible for the death of his mother.

0:51Prince Harry is back in court in his long-running battle against the tabloid press, and this time it's the publisher behind the Daily Mail. So what's at stake? From the Guardians today in Focus, this is The Latest with me, Lucy Hopp. I'm joined by Aaron Sharp, Senior National News Editor. Prince Harry has swapped the dappled sunshine and palm trees of Montecito for what feels like an ice blizzard in London to be in a freezing, packed courtroom. Sounds like it's been really tense this morning as he's taken to the witness stand a day early, right? Yeah, he's back and he's back for a day of court drama.

1:29I think this is really important for Harry. He wants to have his day in court. So much of this, what he's been campaigning for down the years has been about really bringing tabloid news editors and the tabloid journalists who he feels have hounded them for so long and holding them to account. And a big part of this is the optics of turning up in the court, facing them down and making them ask quite difficult questions about stories that they have published about him over the years where he claims some illegal journalism has been the reason why he's been subject to so much what he would describe as unfair treatment in the press.

2:05Yeah, so this is unlawful practices like phone hacking or putting devices into cars or blagging information from, say, hospital doctor's records. And these allegations this time being made against Associated Newspapers Limited, which is the publisher behind the Daily Mail, the Mail on Sunday, the Mail Online. And like you say, this is a series of articles that were published just over a decade up until about 2013. That's right, yeah. So he's going after Britain's best-selling newspaper and the Daily Mail is known for having a strident editorial line on the royal family and Harry has come in for a lot of criticism from them down the years.

2:43His allegation against A &L is that they have employed private investigators to conduct illegal information gathering about him and his family and people in his circle in a view to producing news stories, which he says couldn't have been going any other way. So there are accusations of bugging. There are accusations of phone hacking. There are accusations of blagging medical records all during the course of what he describes as a journalistic campaign to bring him down. Yeah, and he's been quite emotional in his testimony today in the witness stand, hasn't he? He's really talked about the personal impact on him, his longstanding, tense relationship with the press, its implications on, say, his relationships with ex-girlfriends, for example.

3:29Yeah, I think you've got to really see this in the full context of Harry as a life lived in front of a camera lens, as a life lived and played out in newspapers, right? And this is for all the good that's happened to him down the years and all the painful episodes in his life. It's well known that Harry thinks that newspapers were partly responsible for the death of his mother. He is on the record in his memoir as saying that the way the royal family deals with newspapers is part of the reason that he has a difficult relationship with his father, the king, and his brother, Prince William. And obviously the tabloid storm that surrounded his exit from the royal family and the tabloid treatment of his wife, Meghan, is another bone of contention with Harry.

4:13so for all of these reasons he has come into court today to give a really personal account of what it's like being a prince in the public eye he's spoken about how all the people that he's dated in the past have almost accepted the fact that they will constantly be subject to scrutiny by newspapers he's spoken about the fact that people close to him have now become suspected of leaking news stories about him he has said that his social circles are tight He has said that they are not the source of leaks. And he said that the only way that some of these stories which have been broken about him, about his personal life, can only have come from illegal news gathering sources.

4:52Which is something that A &L, the publisher behind the Daily Mail and others, have contested, right? They've said that they were merely speaking to people who were leaking from within Harry's close circle or people that he encountered. So an example was Charlotte Griffiths, a Mail on Sunday reporter who had met Harry allegedly in Ibiza and then contacted him through a Facebook profile that he had called Mr Mischief. Prince Harry denies having a profile called Mr Mischief or talking to Charlotte Griffiths in that way. But it gives you a sense of how A &L is defending itself, which is basically to say this was people coming to us in normal journalistic ways.

5:28Yeah, throughout the course of this nine-week trial, we're going to see claim and counterclaim, and ANL's position is this was journalists doing their job. They will say that there are people close to the prince who would want to tell them stories. The truth is that Harry can never really know for sure where lots of these stories are coming from, and most celebrities in the press, especially in an age when tabloid newspapers were breaking stories about every aspect of a celebrity's personal life, can never really be sure about where these stories have come from. A &L's position is essentially this was tabloid hacks doing a good job as far as a tabloid hack is concerned.

6:03But Harry is joined by this blockbuster cast of household names, which include Elton John, Elizabeth Hurley, Sadie Frost and the mother of Stephen Lawrence, Doreen Lawrence, who are all, not all of them are in court, but they are all expected to give evidence in this. Yeah, and this is one of the things which has lent this case and this story a sort of even more prominence than it would be. You have to remember that until 2023, no member of the royal family had ever turned up in court in a case like this. But Harry has determined since his break from the royal family that he is going to be the one to take the fight to the papers.

6:41He's not doing it alone behind him. he has got a lineup of A-listers. Some of the most prominent figures in British entertainment or cultural life are standing shoulder to shoulder with him to say they too have been wronged by the Daily Mail. And it means that there are so many more stories to pore over, whether that story is about Sadie Frost, whether that story is about Elton John, and the Mail are going to have to defend their conduct in relation to lots of these different types of stories. I have to say it's going to be quite uncomfortable for the Mail journalist because a journalist famously revered for never ruling their sources are going to have to explain how they arrived at stories which related to some people who are household names.

7:19Yeah, and quite uncomfortable for Buckingham Palace, who you imagine are watching today's proceedings quite nervously. We have to think from the palace's point of view, they must be used to Harry being Harry now, right? This is entirely consistent with his new sort of personality, his new guys. he's away from the royal family and he's a campaigner and he doesn't mind getting stuck in and he is doing so in a big way here for the royals they will probably be hoping on a personal level that if there is justice to be had that he gets it i mean he is after all still a relative although they're not on speaking terms at the minute what they will probably want is for this to happen or play out in a way which is going to be as least damaging to them as possible This is an institution famously goes by the maxim, never complain, never explain.

8:08Or Prince Harry is complaining in a big way, in a very visible way in the High Court. Yeah, it's really quite a spectacle, isn't it? And it's worth saying that this isn't the first time that Prince Harry has been in court in this way. He first was at the High Court in 2023 when he took action against the Mirror Group in a case that was partially awarded in his favour with damages of around£140 ,000. This time last year, he settled out of court with the publisher of The Sun, with a settlement of 10 million. But it's interesting that A &L, the publisher of the Mail titles, have decided to thrash this out.

8:44And we know that Paul Dacre, who was the editor of the Daily Mail for 26 years, is a real titan of British journalism, is now chairman of Associated Newspapers Limited, is going to be appearing in court as well. It's another fascinating element to this case and it speaks to both the confidence of both sides in the case. It also speaks to the hostility between the two parties. There was always a suspicion here that this could be settled on the court's steps. But neither side is backing down and this is either because they can't face losing pride over admitting wrongdoing. Certainly the Daily Mail is adamant that there was no wrongdoing, as is being alleged in this case, on the part of their journalists.

9:30And I don't think Harry or any of his fellow complainants are much interested in walking away with a kind of mealy-mouthed apology and some of their costs covered. What Harry really wants is his day in court. What he really wants is to see Dacre on the stand. Having Paul Dacre on the stand is a moment that many journalists will be sitting up and taking notice of. because, as you say, he's a titan of the industry, a formidable editor that was at the helm of the Daily Mail for a very long time, is responsible for really crafting its tone, crafting its sort of bulshy, forthright nature, and it sounds like he's in true form, refusing to back down, and as things stand, is going to be given evidence in court to say that all the allegations listed by Harry against him and all of the other celebrity claimants are unfounded.

10:21Yeah, it's going to be fascinating. Thank you so much, Aaron. Thank you. That's it for today. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Latest, the new evening edition of Today in Focus. We'll be with you every weekday evening with what you need to know about the story everyone's talking about in around 10 minutes. Today in Focus will be back with you tomorrow morning and we'll be back with you tomorrow night. This episode was presented by me, Lucy Hough. The producers were Bryony Moore and Oliver Holmes. The lead producer was Zoe Hitch.

10:55This is The Guardian.