After tens of millions of pounds of legal fees, two decades of anxiety at the top of Rupert Murdoch’s empire and a lifetime of fury for Prince Harry, it all appears to have ended in a score draw.
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.
But for Rupert Murdoch, it gives his media empire the opportunity to finally put this saga behind it and move forward. It protected chief executive Rebekah Brooks from having to give evidence and avoided any courtroom inquisition into whether there was a conspiracy at the top of the organisation. And while accepting its response to the arrest of journalists in 2006 was “regrettable”, there was absolutely no admission of illegality.
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.
So both sides have grounds for celebration, or at least relief. Lawyers on both sides will be slapping each other on the back for legal points well made, concessions wrung out.
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.
But now that peace of mind must come from squeezing an admission from NGN of something more broad than any specific charge – and that is a complete hands-up that during his childhood and early adulthood he was the victim of “serious intrusion”.
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.
And perhaps even more potent for Harry is where the apology acknowledges the impact upon him of the “extensive coverage and serious intrusion” into not just his private life, but that of his mother, Diana, “in particular during his younger years”.
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.
Undeniably it is also an apology being sent beyond the grave to Princess Diana. In achieving that Harry will feel he has fought, and won, justice for his mother in a way that neither his brother or father were able to do. Much of the fallout between Princes Harry and William, and his estrangement from the King, was down to his fury at quiet deals done with the press over past behaviours. His desire for rinsing these in daylight was as much to avenge his mother as himself.
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.”
Harry has clearly pinned so much of this lack of normality on the role of the press. Not just Murdoch’s empire but all those journalists and paparazzi who catalogued his family’s life. Some of that coverage was plain wrong. Much of it was set up and encouraged by the Royals themselves. Harry appeared to hate it all.
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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.
So too was the growing band of PR operatives and advisers they surrounded themselves with, feeding stories and interest for gain.
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.
Everyone was in the game… apart from the two little boys with no cards to play.As NGN has admitted, the press behaved poorly in regard to William and Harry.
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.
Today’s apology is not completely the end for Harry’s crusade against the press. A trial against the Daily Mail’s publishers Associated Press is scheduled for next year. But this admission by Murdoch – a bogeyman who haunted the Prince’s dreams for years – is a big step towards its conclusion.
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.
And so for the billionaire media mogul approaching his 94th birthday, one of the most shameful episodes of his career is over. For both a Prince and a publisher Wednesday’s big win was peace of mind.
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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