Prince Harry’s war with the tabloid press this week became a courtroom battle, with words as weapons. His antipathy can be traced to his mother’s death, which he blames on reckless journalists. As a child he was deeply affected by an aggressive, intrusive press. Newspapers reported with “surprising” detail how he broke his hand as a 14-year-old. Two years later, it was “Harry’s Cocaine Ecstasy and GHB Parties”. While remarking how stressful such stories were, in seven hours of testimony over two days, he remained calm. An invasive tabloid culture produced, he confessed, a “huge amount of paranoia”.
The first British royal to be cross-examined in a court of law since the 19th century, the prince contends that journalists working for the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and People hacked his voicemails and illegally used private investigators to obtain stories about his private life. The 38-year-old says that he was a victim of phone-hacking “on an industrial scale”. The newspapers deny this, saying that they obtained the stories legitimately. Much of the prince’s evidence is circumstantial.
