Prince Harry is on the cusp of a major high-stakes court battle against Rupert Murdoch‘s media empire in which he hopes to settle a lifelong score—but an expert told Newsweek that the gains may be outstripped by his costs.
The Duke of Sussex wants to prove that U.K. tabloid The Sun, published by News Group Newspapers [NGN], broke the law when chasing stories about his private life.
Originally, he had hoped to prove its journalists hacked his cellphone, but a judge ruled he had left that aspect of his case too late, having known about phone-hacking many years ago.
Karwai Tang/WireImage
A trial of his other allegations is due to begin on Tuesday at the High Court in London where he will be represented by celebrity lawyer David Sherborne, who also fought Johnny Depp‘s U.K. legal battle against Amber Heard.
Professor Tim Luckhurst, principal of South College at Britain’s Durham University, told Newsweek: “I think he’s spending a great deal of money to achieve very little.”
People reported Harry will not attend in person, meaning he may not grace the corridors of the High Court’s Rolls Building until his own witness testimony is due, likely to be in around February.
Among the claims, Harry’s team will be looking to convince the judge that The Sun‘s reporters obtained flight records for his ex-girlfriend Chelsy Davy so they could have photographers waiting for her when her plane touched down.
“Seeing all this evidence only now is infuriating,” Harry said in a March 2023 witness statement, seen by Newsweek.
“To know we were being tracked, bugged and hacked while trying to have a private relationship, just so [publisher] NGN could print a story and sell a newspaper, is mind-blowing.
“Methods that should, at best, be reserved for proper investigative journalism that looks into public-interest stories were being used on normal, innocent people, and for what?” the prince added.
“Those responsible should be locked up in my view as there is zero justification and it is, frankly, criminal. Any claim or suggestion senior staff weren’t aware of what their employees/journalists were doing is obviously a lie.”
And Harry will be gunning for big names from the Murdoch empire. At one stage, he even attempted to call Murdoch himself as a witness, though that bid was slapped down by a judge.
Others in his sights include Victoria Newton, The Sun‘s current editor, and News UK chief executive Rebekah Brooks, who became world-famous during the original phone-hacking scandal.
“Victoria Newton and Rebekah Brooks were involved in the editing and editorial decision to publish one of the most misogynistic and vile columns ever written,” Harry’s witness statement said, “namely Jeremy Clarkson’s column piece about my wife in which he said that he ‘hated [Meghan] on a cellular level’ and that he was ‘dreaming of the day when [Meghan] is made to parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain while crowds chant, ‘Shame!’ and throw lumps of excrement at her’ among other vile and disgusting things.”
A lingering question remains though about how much he can actually achieve through lawsuits of this kind, even if he wins.
Victory might spell further litigation against The Sun from other claimants, which could drain financial reserves, but the company has been sued many times before over phone-hacking at the sister newspaper News of the World.
While the original scandal is widely regarded as having put an end to phone hacking as a practice, there is little sign that past court action has changed the newspaper’s stance on any particular issue.
The Sun remains just as critical of Harry and Meghan, their royal exit, their marriage, their lives in America, and the reception given to their various Netflix shows and commercial projects.
If the case does not transform the landscape of British journalism, there is, though, one other possible gain it might deliver if a win can soothe the wound that Harry carries with him from the death of his mother and allow him to move.
Even that is an unanswered question, though, as Harry’s hatred of the British media is lifelong; he was, at one stage, told by a therapist it was an addiction.
“If there was one thing to which I did seem undeniably addicted, however, it
was the press,” the prince wrote in his book Spare.
“Reading it, raging at it, she said, these were obvious compulsions. I laughed. ‘True. But they’re such s***.’ She laughed. ‘They are.'”
Jack Royston is chief royal correspondent for Newsweek, based in London. You can find him on X, formerly Twitter, at @jack_royston and read his stories on Newsweek‘s The Royals Facebook page.
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