What Prince Harry’s settlement means for him and the British royal family

Prince Harry’s last minute solution Rupert Murdoch’s long-running feud with his tabloids was on the front pages of a handful of London newspapers on Thursday, though none of Mr Murdoch’s.

The Sun, which admitted wrongdoing by the private investigators it hired to find private information about Harry for more than a decade, didn’t get the story until Page 6. Mr Murdoch’s extensive reporting, The Times of London, covered it in the US. At the bottom of page 12, next to a report on actress Judi Dench’s sight loss.

The Daily Mail, whose publisher Associated Newspapers is also being sued by Harry for hacking his mobile phone and invading his privacy, reported the news internally, The Daily Mirror, which is published by Mirror Group Newspapers, lost the case of phone hacking To Harry in 2023.

Such are the harsh realities of going to war with Britain’s tabloids like Harry mostly did in 2019when he filed the first of many lawsuits against three powerful publishers: Associated Newspapers, Mirror Group and Mr. Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers. The Daily Mail case is expected to go to trial next year.

Even newspapers not involved in the litigation with Harry, such as the right-wing Daily Telegraph, were dismissive of the deal. “Harry climbs down after eight-figure payout,” The Telegraph said in a front-page article, adding: “His quest to bring down part of the Murdoch empire ended in confusion, not implosion.”

Critics of the press coverage said it downplayed the importance of Harry’s findings. Crucially, it is the first admission of wrongdoing by News Group Newspapers, not only at Mr Murdoch’s The News of the World, which was closed in 2011, but also at his flagship British tabloid, The Sun.

The News Group emphasized that its admissions did not apply to The Sun’s editors or reporters, but to private investigators. But the paper has been edited over the years by Rebekah Brooks, who is now chief executive of News UK (News UK subsidiary News Group Newspapers publishes The Sun).

Harry’s co-prosecutor, former Labor deputy leader Tom Watson, said he would hand police a dossier containing evidence of his criminal behaviour. Harry’s lawyer, David Sherborne, called on police and Parliament to investigate not only his illegal activities at The Sun, but also evidence of perjury and cover-ups by current and former News executives.

Former BBC royal correspondent Peter Hunt said: “If you care about the reporting media, Harry’s case was actually an act in the public interest, at great cost to himself.” “He forced them to accept something they had refused to accept for years.”

“What’s frustrating about it is that the public doesn’t appreciate it,” Mr Hunt added. “A lot of their understanding of what Harry wants to do is through the lens of a media that is implacably hostile to him.”

Press coverage of Harry and his wife Meghan has been consistently negative since then He announced his plans to leave England This took a huge toll on their popularity: Harry’s approval rating was 32 percent, compared to 74 percent for his brother William, in a poll conducted by the British polling firm YouGov at the end of last year. Meghan’s approval rating was 19 percent, the lowest for a prominent royal.

“It was truly appalling to watch Prince Harry and his wife’s name blackened by large sections of Fleet Street,” former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger told Channel 4 on Wednesday, referring to London’s traditional way of newspaper publishing. “It almost seems like a deliberate tactic to destroy the credibility of someone who is a threat to them.”

In this case, Harry may have deepened his predicament by emphasizing the need for a trial. Speaking in “The New York Times”. DealBook summit last monthhe explained that under English law, plaintiffs who reject settlements larger than those awarded by the court are on the hook for both parties’ legal costs. News Group Newspapers had already spent more than a billion dollars settling 1,300 phone hacking claims and only Harry and Mr Watson were determined to take their claims to court.

“They settled because they had to,” Harry said. “So one of the main reasons for seeing this is the responsibility, because I’m the last person who can really achieve this.”

Moments before the trial began, Harry agreed to a settlement worth at least 10 million pounds ($12.3 million). As broadcaster and vocal critic of the prince Piers Morgan, posted on the social network“So ‘moral crusader’ Prince Harry took the money.”

Harry has not said what he plans to do with the money. His legal bills will be large, although media lawyer Daniel Taylor said these are usually covered by the party offering the settlement for a separate fee. He made no comment other than the statement read to him by Mr. Sherborne.

But in one respect, Harry’s decision to settle may ease the tension with his family. She said last year that her campaign against the tabloids was at the root of her rift with her brother William and her father, King Charles III.

Harry claimed they had a “disclosure agreement” with the Newsgroup under which they agreed to drop or settle legal claims to avoid having to testify about potentially embarrassing details of the intercepted voicemail messages. His brother William said in a legal filing that he settled with News Group in 2020 for “big money.”

Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace, where William’s office is located, declined to comment on the settlement.

By joining the deal with his brother, Harry will avoid another embarrassing spectacle for the royal family. But Mr Hunt and other royal watchers cautioned against concluding that the fissures, which included painful issues such as the family’s treatment of Meghan and the airing of dirty laundry, would heal on their own in a memoir called Caution.

“The damage is so deep that one court case will not be enough to address it,” Mr Hunt said. “The cracks are spreading.”