Despite a chastening apology from News Group Newspapers (NGN) last week, the Duke’s decision to settle somewhat undermines his previous oaths to “change the media landscape” and, in particular, to “never settle.” With another Netflix contract in peril, perhaps Harry decided to cut his losses – the publisher of the Sun agreed to pay him “substantial damages” for “serious intrusions” into both his life and that of his late mother between 1996 and 2011.
Followers of the story will be accustomed to the post-court sermons of Harry’s barrister. In his final delivery, Mr Sherborne hailed a “monumental victory:” NGN, he said, had finally “been held to account for its illegal actions and its blatant disregard for the law.” Forgotten, it appears, was the pair’s elaborate plot to drag NGN to court; the only way, they used to say, to secure the accountability they now claim to have achieved. Murdoch’s rivals should be particularly gutted, yet the sense of anticlimax is unilateral. Even NGN cheekily expressed their “surprise” at Harry’s “serious approach for settlement” – calling him a wuss might have been clearer.
The Duke’s sudden and uncharacteristic reluctance to litigate is thoroughly disappointing. For once, he was really getting somewhere. It’s all very well a fresh-faced NGN apologising for the crimes of the now lifeless News of the World – much like a son apologising for his grandfather’s sporadic xenophobia – but when all the old editors happen to secure fresh posts at the Sun or other Murdoch outlets, it’s clear the work’s not quite done. Thanks to carefully worded press releases by NGN and others, faceless “private investigators” (handily never any actual journalists) thanklessly took the fall for the dirtiest legwork, just as they did in 2006. Yet again, the shifty editors who could really do with some legal attention find themselves home and dry, delivered by the Sussexes’ appetite for sympathetic headlines and, it appears, cash in hand.
“Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex 2020 cropped 02” by File:Prince Harry arrives at the UK-Africa Investment Summit in London 20 January 2020 (49413820711).jpg: DFID – UK Department for International Development derivative work: Minerva97 is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
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