The Duke of Sussex’s decision to settle with News Group Newspapers (NGN), owners of The Sun and long-gone News of the World, gives him a fulsome apology and a bag of cash rumoured to be in the many, many millions. It also brings the first admission of any wrongdoing by The Sun.
It also protected the reputation of The Sun to some degree by asserting any illegal activity had not been carried out by journalists, but by arm’s length private investigators. The very worst behaviour of journalists – hacking, surveillance and misuse of private information – was laid at the door of the News of the World, which closed 14 years ago.
But for Prince Harry I wonder if this settlement gives him something far deeper, and more important, which cannot be captured in any legalese: peace of mind. A peace of mind which perhaps has felt out of reach his entire life. A missing peace of mind which has made his recent behaviour often hard to stomach as he demonstrated a brittleness and sense of victimhood. And a personality which, while claiming to be repelled by spotlight, attention and inauthenticity, was at the same time drawn to it.
When NGN apologises for “distress” caused to the Duke, “damage inflicted” on “relationships, friendships and family”, flashing through his mind will be the bust-ups or embarrassments with Chelsy Davy, Cressida Bonas, Caroline Flack and so many others.
So this isn’t just an apology for nefarious activities by the titles – it is an apology too for the volume of coverage regardless of what it was or said.
The period for the admitted intrusion into Harry’s life began in 1996 – the year before that little 12-year-old boy walked behind the coffin of his dead mother. It ended 15 years later when Harry was a 27-year-old man, struggling to manage relationships, work and friendships. Around this time he told an interviewer: “There’s a lot of times that both myself and my brother wish, obviously, that we were just completely normal.”
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Read MoreThe 1990s became a feeding frenzy of press reporting on the Royals. The number of people involved in illegal activity was tiny across the industry. And yet all of us involved in the national press at that time were implicated in the feeding frenzy, operating within a culture where Royals and celebrities were commodities with commercial value.
And at the heart of it all, so too were the characters themselves. The Royals and celebrities who manipulated the media for the coverage they wanted. And then there was the public which lapped up every twist and turn in the lives of the Royals’ relationship dramas.
But why did all those Royal hangers-on – and why didn’t their parents – do more to protect them? There’s a reason why you only ever see official pictures of Princes George and Louis and Princess Charlotte on birthdays or first days at school or on official outings. There’s a reason why you don’t see them hanging out at a play park with their mates. Some of that is to do with press regulation and privacy rules. But some of it too is to do with their parents doing a better job of protecting them.
Senior Murdoch executives too will be hugely relieved. Settling claims since the 2011 closure of the News of the World has already cost it more than £1bn. So it was never about the money – it was about trying to contain potentially cataclysmic reputational damage. It could have also been the final straw to push the Murdoch children to offload the problematic news division after Rupert’s death.
Alison Phillips was editor of the Daily Mirror from 2018-24; she won Columnist of the Year at the 2018 National Press Awards
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