Prince Harry and Meghan Markle so valuable to the business model and distribution of the British tabloids that the newspapers will not stop writing about and attacking them.
Even though a coupleIncreasingly willing to resort to lawsuits — which they have a habit of winning — to try to silence their critics, industry insiders have told The Daily Beast that tabloids are more likely to react. responded by doubling their positive coverage.
On Wednesday, Harry dismissed the latest threat from his California home, suing their old nemesis, Associated Newspaper Limited (ANL), publisher of the Mail on Sunday, for libel. In spite of HarryTheir team has declined to say what the content of the case is, The Daily Beast has been told by sources that the move is linked to a story that surfaced last week. Mail on Sunday which accused Harry of trying to keep his legal action secret against the British government, and of giving a misleading account of events when he said, in a press release, that he will pay for that protection yourself.
ANL declined to comment beyond confirming Harry had filed a lawsuit against them, but The Daily Beast understands they are confident of their story.
Of course, a skeptical observer would note that ANL says they are confident of their story copying Meghan’s. handwritten letter with her father, which was later found to be an invasion of her privacy. They were also confident of a story that said Harry had “turned his back” on his former military associations, to which they later apologized. Harry and Meghan also won a privacy battle against LA Splash News and X17 photo agencies.
The fact that Harry is now kicking off a mysterious smear of a legal action is an all too obvious sign of what appears to be part of Montecito Mountbatten-Windsors when it comes to filing the lawsuit.
Their main target is their hated enemy: the media. They also have phone hacking complaints against the publishers of Mirror and now no longer exists International Newsletter.
The new action is, prima faciea complicated case, and therefore unlikely that the public would devote much effort to trying to figure out Harry’s latest beef with Letters. As a former senior editor of the British tabloid told The Daily Beast: “This latest act is so confusing, you have to read the story three times to know what he’s complaining about.” .
Mention the scene in Monty Python’s Brian’s life when John Cleese and his comrades had a small argument over the exact name of their fledgling political party, the moderator said: “It was the stuff of the famous Judean People’s Front.”
However, there is little doubt in the minds of reporters and editors that the intent behind the repeated legal actions is to convince editors and news owners that running Negative stories about Harry and Meghan are not worth it.
Strategy — signed up by media attorney for The Daily Beast Mark Stephens of the international law firm Howard Kennedy is to “go to your lawyer at the slightest provocation” – in stark contrast to the once-royal royal tradition of simply denying and ignoring inaccurate stories in the press.
Indeed, Queen Elizabeth sued a newspaper for the first time only in 1983, after a Buckingham Palace kitchen worker, Kieran Kenny, sold her story to the public. Sun. The Queen has an order against Sun after the first day Kenny revealed, leading Sun readers will be rejected in the next day’s section, followed by: “How barefoot makes my toast.”
““There used to be about one royal lawsuit every decade. For the past five years, it has looked like a cataclysm.”
– Mark Stephens
“There used to be about one royal lawsuit every decade,” says Stephens, “For the past five years, it’s been more like a cataclysm.”
Stephens refers to cases as the queen suing Sun when it was published before her Christmas speech in 1993, and Charles sued Mail on Sunday to publish excerpts from his diary in 2006, in which he described China’s leaders as “terrible old wax works”.
Of course, it’s not just Harry and Meghan who find their contentious side. Arguably, the tone of the younger generation’s active interaction with the media was set by William and Kate when Kate French magazine lawsuit Closer for publishing pictures of her topless sunbathing 10 years ago.
The Closer case is a line in the sand, and 100,000 euros win It was announced in a French court that young royals will not allow their privacy to be invaded without protesting the way their parents and grandparents did.
In 2020, Kate threatened legal action against the magazine Tatler for publishing a story that said she had become “dangerously thin” and criticized her family’s non-aristocratic background. Tatler withdrew the piece and things went no further.
“Harry and Meghan are the couple readers love to hate, they’re clones, and lawsuits are just a business expense.”
– Person in ‘Mail’
Of course, the source of hatred for both Harry and William was the death of their mother while being hunted by the paparazzi.
Both are very clear about who they blame. In his frank celebrity interview with ITV’s Tom Bradby “I won’t be bullied into playing a game of killing my mother,” said Harry.
He also said the flashes of paparazzi bulbs brought him “straight back” to Diana’s death, saying, “Every time I see the camera, every time I hear the click, every time I see it. flash, I’ll be right back, so in that respect it’s the worst reminder of her life as opposed to the best. “
Despite the positive stance young royals have taken, the irony is that the past decade has seen a global boom in royal insurance. The fact that the odds of Daily mail tack change is now extremely close to zero.
Indeed, one Letters Insiders told The Daily Beast: ” Letters is on a crusade against Harry and Meghan, and these legal actions will only make ANL even more determined to keep it going. Harry and Meghan are the couple readers love to hate, they’re clones, and lawsuits are just a business expense. Look at how much Letters out of case [about the letter]. It really damaged Meghan’s reputation in the UK and although ANL lost the case, the editor of Mail on Sunday The person who published that letter, Ted Verity, has been promoted. That tells you everything you need to know.”
“I learned early on that the incentives of publishing do not necessarily match the incentives of truth.”
– Prince Harry
The former tabloid executive made a similar point, saying: “There are some people who try to run this scorching earth policy to keep people from writing about them, and for a similar person. Relatively low, it sometimes works. Reporters and desks just thought why bother? But for Prince Harry to try to achieve a lower profile through suing people just makes no sense. People will always want to read about him. It might have made ANL more careful about wording, and maybe this time they made a mistake in wording whether it was secret or not secret, but in the end if Harry wears a silly hat in public Plus, they’ll get angry out of him. They wouldn’t slip up for something like that. “
Harry knows that he represents too important a part of the media’s business plan for them to stop writing about him.
Indeed, like Harry told an online symposium last year: “I learned early on that the incentives of publishing are not necessarily aligned with the incentives of truth… My experience is that there is more and more social media around newspapers. UK press, who sadly combine profit with purpose and news with entertainment”.
The larger battle with the media is one that the Sussexes may know they can never win, but the inconvenient reality for the newspapers is that they are constantly winning matches. individual battle.
As Stephens says, “They’re doing pretty well. They continue to win. Privacy law is an area that has grown slowly over the past five to 10 years. The Sussexes have put boosters underneath it.”
