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On June 7, Prince Harry became the first high-ranking British royal to testify before a court in more than 130 years. He stood as the witness in a case he and three other claimants brought against the Mirror newspaper group for its alleged use of illegal methods such as phone hacking to obtain information on them for stories between 1996 and 2011.
In court, he said, “The tabloids routinely carried articles about me that were often false but peppered with snippets of the truth.”
“This created such an alternate and distorted version of me for the common people — the people I have to serve and interact with as a member of the Royal Family — that anyone among the thousands of people I met or became acquainted with on any given day could have easily gone: ‘You You know what, you idiot. I’ve read all the stories about you and now I’m going to stab you.”
What is the issue?
The current case, “His Royal Highness The Duke of Sussex v Mirror Group Newspapers Limited,” began in May this year and involves allegations from Prince Harry along with soap opera actors Michael Le Vell and Nikki Sanderson and comedian Paul Whitehouse’s ex-wife, Fiona Whiteman.
The petitioners alleged that journalists from the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and People newspapers procured private and confidential information about them through illegal means, such as phone hacking, between 1996-2011, the BBC reported.
Of these, Harry confirmed that journalists at the three newspapers had accessed his voicemails and used other illegal methods to obtain his personal information.
Claiming his relationships fell apart because his friends and family were “drawn into chaos”, Harry said he also began to fear that those around him might betray him by leaking his information to the press.
Harry also remembered how the paparazzi always knew his whereabouts and how the voicemail icon on his phone would disappear before he could even listen to the voice messages on his phone.
Lacking any “conclusive evidence of hacking,” Harry’s lawyers have relied on 147 news articles published by the Mirror between 1996-2010, containing information they claim could only have been obtained through illegal means due to its intimate nature, The New York Times He said. Of these 147 articles, 33 were selected for consideration in the trial.
What are the legal aspects surrounding Harry’s claim?
The case highlights the battle between aspects of media freedom and individual privacy. Although it is common for a public figure’s privacy to be compromised because people have a right to know something that is in the public interest, Harry points out that some information about him could only have been obtained illegally. For example, while talking about an article for the Mirror on his trip to Mozambique with Chelsy DavyHarry said he feared “blasting in flight,” the practice of using illegal means or lies to obtain the couple’s travel details, The New York Times reported.
However, in the 2006 House of Lords ruling in “Jamil and Owers v Wall Street Journal Europe Sprl”, Justice Brenda Hill referred to a “Reynolds defense” on the libel case against freedom of the press. “The public only has the right to be informed if two conditions are met. First, there must be a genuine public interest in the communication and receipt of information,” the court said, adding that it is very different from “information of interest to the public” such as “distasteful gossip about the activities of wives and girlfriends of football players.” foot”, which although it is of interest to a large section of the population but cannot be claimed to have “any real public interest in telling us all about it”, the court said.
Moreover, this is not the first time that Harry has sought action against the media for breach of privacy. Since 2019, Harry and Meghan have filed at least seven lawsuits against British and American media organizations to hold them accountable for violating their privacy and writing false stories about them, according to Reuters.
In January 2022, the Mail paid Markle £1 in damages for breaching her privacy by publishing her private letter to her father, as part of her three-year legal battle against Associated Newspapers, the Mail’s parent company.
What is Harry’s testimony?
Prince Harry’s two-day testimony saw several confessions from him, with lawyer David Sherburn highlighting the damage caused by the media’s interference.
During this, Harry told the court that the phone hacking was done on an “industrial scale” by the newspaper group. In support of this, Harry’s lawyer read an email from Katie Hind, the Mirror’s journalist, describing how phones were hacked, while Harry added that he once found a “tracking device” in his ex-girlfriend’s car, the Guardian reports.
In addition, Harry submitted a 55-page written statement, a signed document that records witness evidence and confirms its veracity.
The press “played a destructive role” during his formative years, the statement said, leading him into a “downward spiral”, and causing bouts of depression and paranoia, and the statement said some editors and journalists had “blood on their hands”. The work caused pain and “unintentionally” death. The statement came about his late mother, Princess Diana, who was chased by the press.
Harry, who blamed the paparazzi for the 1977 Paris car chase that later led to the plane crash that killed his mother, said harassment and intrusiveness by the British press, including alleged racist articles about him and his wife, Meghan MarkleHe forced them to flee to the United States in 2020, leaving royal life behind.
What is mirror defense?
On his first day in court, Harry is cross-examined by the Mirror’s solicitor, Andrew Green, who indicates that the Mirror’s sources were based on official statements or publicly available information rather than a wiretap. While Green continued to deny that the Mirror’s actions were “all illegal,” Prince Harry responded that he suspected several stories appeared in the tabloids between 1996-2011 involving details of his personal life related to payments made to a private investigator.
In short, the press group denies the allegations of phone hacking, while claiming that the details in those articles could have come from other legitimate sources or reporting techniques.
Newspapers Rupert Murdoch Group, which publishes The Sun, and Associated Newspapers Ltd, which later owned the Daily Mail and the Mail, argued that the cases should be dropped because Harry had failed to bring the lawsuits within six years of the deadline for his discovery. alleged infringement. Meanwhile, Harry’s lawyers argued that the plaintiffs should be granted an exception to the time limit because the publishers suppressed their illegal actions.
Have there been similar cases in India?
In the Indian context, a similar trend was observed in the Bombay High Court judgment in September 2021 in the case of “Shilpa Shetty Kundra v Clapping Hands Pvt. Ltd.” Shetty had taken to court against defamatory articles and videos published against her and her family following the arrest of her husband Raj Kundra in July 2021, in connection with the production and distribution of pornographic films.
To make it clear that it could not pass a blanket media gag order on reporting anything against Shetty, the court struck a balance by directing three Youtube videos to be deleted. Traditional media will understand the rationale and competent advice. “We can’t say the same about these bloggers and private bloggers,” Judge Patel said.
Further, in the 2017 ruling in “Justice KS Puttaswamy (retd) and Anr vs Union of India and Anr,” privacy held by the nine-judge panel is a fundamental right, adding that it is “protected as an integral part of The right to life and personal liberty under Article 21.”
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