For Harry, it all stems from this tragic event, and his stated fear that “history will repeat itself” for him, his wife and children.
After an awards ceremony at a ballroom in New York City on Tuesday night, a spokeswoman for the couple said “very aggressive paparazzi” chased a vehicle carrying Harry’s mother , Meghan and Meghan, Doria Ragland.
The spokeswoman said the chase lasted two hours and was almost “catastrophic”. A spokesman for the New York Police Department said the presence of many photographers made transporting the couple “difficult”, adding that Harry and Meghan reached their destination safely without any collision not hurt
A photography agency, Backgrid, which worked with freelance photographers at the scene, said that “there were no near-collisions or near-misses during this incident… The photographers have reported that they felt the couple were not in immediate danger at no time.”
Ken Wharfe, a former bodyguard for Princess Diana and her then two young children, said the New York episode appeared to be “poorly organised, badly planned”.
“It looked like there was chaos when they left the hotel,” he told The Washington Post. “There was no delimitation of barriers. The press was free to go wherever it wanted. … The trip started badly.”
Wharfe said that if he had been there, he would have advised Harry and Meghan to pose briefly for photographs before leaving. “All the paparazzi want is a photograph,” he said. “They’re not out to kill people.”
But for Harry, after a life marked by constant contact with the paparazzi, and with the fate of his mother so dominant in his worldview, the media’s intentions remain highly suspect.
He is currently waging three separate legal battles in British courts against the publishers of three of Britain’s biggest tabloids — the Daily Mail, the Mirror and the Sun — over claims the publications hacked his phones and invaded his privacy .
His lawsuit against the Mirror’s parent company is underway, and the fifth in line to the throne could appear in the witness box early next month.
When Harry married biracial American Meghan Markle, many Britons hoped they would help modernize the British monarchy. But now estranged from the royal family, Harry has said his mission in life is to change the tabloid culture, which he believes not only pollutes the lives of media consumers but has also contributed to the family rift.
Harry “honestly believes he is on a quest to clean up the British press,” said Alan Rusbridger, who edited The Guardian for 20 years and now runs Prospect magazine. He said there is an almost endless appetite for stories and photos about Harry and Meghan and while “it’s not open season on Harry and Meghan, it’s almost open season on Harry and Meghan.”
“[Harry] he’s really had a lot of intrusion, and you can understand why he feels angry, you don’t need a lot of empathy to understand that what happened in New York will surely upset him,” he said.
In his memoir, “Spare,” Harry wonders aloud why the paparazzi who chased his mother into a Paris tunnel in 1997 weren’t arrested. “Why weren’t they blamed more roundly?” he asks “Who sent them? And why weren’t they in jail?”
In 1999, a French judge investigating the high-speed crash assigned sole responsibility to its drunk driver and not to the photographers chasing them.
The prince’s disgust with the media has been further fueled by what he considers targeted harassment, with racist undertones, in the coverage of his wife.
He blamed the Daily Mail for Meghan suffering a miscarriage. He said British tabloids illegally collected information about him and ruined his relationship with previous girlfriends.
When British TV personality Jeremy Clarkson wrote in the Sun tabloid that he dreamed Meghan would be “paraded naked through the streets of every city in Britain as crowds chanted ‘Shame!’ and throwing lumps of excrement at her,” Harry said, describing the piece as “hurtful and cruel” and suggesting it encouraged the abuse of women. The British public largely supported the prince. The Sun withdrew the column, a response that seemed unprecedented.
In “Spare,” Harry writes of the damage done “all because a terrible crowd of denizens and crones and reduced and clinically diagnosable criminals along Fleet Street feel the need to get their jollys and increase their profits and solve his personal problems. tormenting a very large, very old, very dysfunctional family.”
In many ways, Harry’s feud with his family is about the media. Harry alleges that PR teams working for his brother Prince William, stepmother Queen Camilla and father King Charles III actively offered negative stories about him and Meghan in exchange for a better coverage for themselves.
His relatives have not responded to these allegations.
The prince told ITV that switching media “can be incredibly difficult, and I don’t know how long it will take, but it’s 100 per cent worth it”. He added that he’s “happy that they talk shit about me every day, because I know it’s not true, but what gets me is when you incite me to hate myself, my wife, and my kids.”
He hopes to force change through the courts.
In his case against the editor of the Daily Mirror, where he is expected to take over, Harry claims his voicemails were hacked and other information obtained illegally between 1996 and 2011. He won a anticipated in the trial when the publisher admitted. to collect illegal information about him in a case. But the publisher denies the newspaper hacked his phone and argues the case should not go ahead because too much time has passed.
Harry is also suing Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper group, News Group Newspapers, for wrongful acts, including the hacking of his voicemails, which he alleges took place from 1994 to 2016. In the documents court documents in this case, Harry claimed that there was a collusion between Murdoch. company and Prince William.
And he is suing the publisher of the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday for alleged phone hacking and misuse of private information. Harry appeared at a pre-trial hearing at London’s High Court in March, which he was not due to do, but underlined how seriously the case is being taken. The publishers deny the allegations.
Matt Walsh, head of the School of Journalism at Cardiff University in Wales, said Harry’s lawsuits against the tabloids were unlikely to set new legal precedents in Britain, as much of the behavior that ·lega prince in his civil lawsuits is already illegal, meaning you can’t hack someone’s phone.
It is legal for a photographer to take pictures in public places, Walsh notes. It is illegal for them to drive recklessly or cause crashes.
Rusbridger, the former editor of the Gurdian, said the attitude of British paparazzi is “‘we’ll take the pictures and pay later if we have to.’ It’s such a lucrative market that if you get fined five years later, you take it on the chin.”
Walsh predicted Harry’s court appearance will make global headlines. “Whenever the royal family has been involved in court cases, they never give evidence,” he said. “They never, ever appear in court.”
Harry and his lawyers could put the tabloids to shame. It could win a substantial deal, or it might not. It might win in the court of public opinion, or it might not.
Walsh said the prince, unlike other plaintiffs, has the money and motivation not to settle out of court.
“This is part of his life’s work,” Walsh said. “He believes it is his duty to prevent the press from being as intrusive and aggressive as it is in the private lives of the rich and famous.”
