DISMISSED! Royal reporters reveal all after Prince Harry's legal case | Palace Confidential

Prince Harry was among a group of high -profile individuals who claimed that the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday used illegal news -gathering methods.Today, all claims were dismissed in an overwhelming victory for the Mail, with many asking whether this case should have been brought in the first place.We haven't been able to talk about this until now.Hello and welcome to a special episode of Palace Confidential, which comes at the end of a years -long legal battle brought about by Prince Harry and six other high -profile individuals against Associated Newspapers, the parent company of the Daily Mail, and the Palace Confidential, this show and this channel.The judge today dismissed all claims.In summary, the plaintiffs had alleged that they were victims of abhorrent criminal activity and gross breaches of privacy.

The publisher was accused of allegedly hiring private investigators who they claim used unlawful means to gather information on them in the late 1990s and early 2000s.However, the judge accepted the denials of the 40 Associated Newspaper journalists who, I'm quoting now, gave lawful explanations for the sourcing of the disputed articles and incidents.Two of those journalists are in the studio with me today.Charlotte Griffiths is the editor at large on the Mail on Sunday and Richard Kaye is the Senior Editor -at -Large on the Daily Mail.Welcome to you both and thank you both so much for coming and talking today.Charlotte, the trial itself lasted three months but the initial allegations go back nearly four years.

The verdict has been a long time coming.How are you feeling today?

So relieved, I have to say.I didn't quite realise how much it's been hanging over my head for going back years.And then, you know, obviously when I gave evidence at trial, I started to think, wow, this is really starting to affect every aspect of my life, my family, my three kids at home.And, you know, I was giving evidence in trial, not seeing them for days on end.And then as we were waiting for the verdict,today, the stress at home just got worse and worse.

So, you know, yeah, I'm so relieved it's all over.

Being cross -examined in the High Court by a barrister, that's a lot, isn't it?

Yeah, I was so nervous in the build -up.It was insane.It was like preparing for the worst exam you've ever done, except that I knew all the answers.And so I got more and more nervous.Confident as I was giving my evidence because I realized this isn't a science exam.I don't know the answers to it It's just my real life.

I'm just telling the truth So as the cross -examination got going a bit I kind of relaxed into it And then I just from just every time you ask a question I just told the truth then it seemed to be the right answer.

So it got better Richard Kaye, this is a hugely expensive trial.We're looking at something like £50 million.

Well, it's a hugely expensive trial.It's also a very consequential trial because it has huge impact on freedom of speech and the freedom of the press in this country.We don't enjoy the kind of freedoms that our American viewers take for granted under their constitution.So this was a very important trial.case for us, for journalists, for our newspaper, and I think for our readers too.I mean, as Charlotte says, for us here, for the family at the Daily Mail, it's a sense of great relief.

I was in court when Charlotte gave evidence.She was a very impressive witness.She was harried constantly over her recollections and over her journalism.In my case, it was a mercifully shorter experience, but it was much further back in time.It was something like 21 years ago.And, you know, everybody suffers over the years from memory.

It applied equally to Harry and his fellow claimants against us.They couldn't remember clearly everything, and we obviously can't either.everything, but we all said our bit and said the truth.

We want to discuss, this is Palace Confidential, we're looking at Prince Harry's involvement here.Charlotte, I think there's a sort of feeling among lots of people that it's just quite sad that it's come to this, that really this is a paper that previously I think had good relations with Harry.And here we were in court, or here the newspaper group was in court, facing these claims.What do you make of that idea?

I think it's definitely sad it's come to this.I think the thing about Harry is that he's previously won some phone hacking.claims and I think he just assumes that all journalists are exactly the same.He has no concept that we are individuals and some of us have integrity, some of us work hard, some of us obviously do not phone hack and we get our stories from, in my case, going to parties for years because I was a diary journalist and cultivating real contacts.Some of whom want to be in the paper and we all know that when Harry and Meghan want to be in the paper, you know, People magazine for example, they make sure their message comes through and You know, there's a little bit of a symbiotic relationship between journalists at the Daily Mail and celebrities and royals.And he just completely seemed blinded to that.

And he's unable to fathom a world in which journalists aren't complete ogres.

Richard, it does seem that there's a feeling that Harry was sort of led into this.Because, you know, Associated News said we did not claim that he was lying about what he was saying.He feels that he was sort of brought into this case, perhaps misguidedly.

I think quite possibly that is true.What Harry represented...the people who brought this case was, if you like, the icing on the cake.He was the name that was going to drive the story behind the court case, the headlines, if you like, galvanise a lot of media coverage, which, of course, it got right at the beginning.But yes, Harry was slightly misguided in perhaps taking on board everything that he was told.As Charlotte said, he wants to believe the worst of journalists, many of whom he has known a very long time.

People like me who've been writing about him, you know, since he was born pretty much.And yet he has developed in recent years this absolute hostility towards the media and the tabloid press in particular.I mean, it's a tragedy the way this has come about, but it is something we have had to deal with and try to push back on because many of the claims Harry made were simply untrue.

And I think it's worth also exploring the relationship of this group of papers with the family going back.You know, when we look at how his mother, I'd say that you were certainly the journalist closest to his mother in Fleet Street.And would it be fair to say that the male, effectively, not that we took sides, tried to be balanced, were more on her side than the rest of Fleet Street were when it came to that divorce?

Absolutely.I mean, I can remember the coverage of the Charles Darner divorce, which went on for many years, the War of the Whales, as we called it.And we unashamedly took Diana's side.We felt that she was more sinned against than sinning.She was a friend of the paper too.It's perfectly true that she and I had a friendship that went beyond the fact that I was merely a teacher.

journalist here.We were good friends outside my work.Kensington, where we are based in West London, was also our base when Diana was alive.And it's right across the road from Kensington Palace.We were kind of Diana's local paper in many ways.And she would often drop in to meet editors and executives.

She was a frequent guest at internal private boardroom lunches, for example.Or she would just come in to pick up the latest edition of the paper.There were moments when she wasn't happy with what I wrote, what the paper wrote, what its attitude was to some of the things she did.We were, for example, extremely critical, as viewers of Palace Confidential have heard me say before, we were extremely critical of her involvement with the panorama and the interview with Martin Bashir.We thought that was wrong and we weren't afraid to say so.But Diana accepted our criticism.

What she didn't do was was complain about us and accuse us of doing illegal things in the way that her son has done.And there is a huge difference in Harry's approach to the media and that of his late mother.

Charlie, you've worked here a long time.Was there ever a suggestion that the paper was somehow out to get Harry or against him in any way?

Going back?When he was not married, essentially, he very much was a live wire.I feel like the tabloid press forgave him a lot.You know, the naked billiards, who can forget that?You know, the tabloids said, good on you, Harry.You got naked in Vegas.

What fun.

And he fought for his country.And we don't forget that.And he was a hugely popular figure.I mean, for many years, he was, after the late Queen Elizabeth, the second most popular figure.member of the royal family and he's streets ahead of other members of the family.He had something about him which was

very reminiscent to me of his mother.But the public loved him and they loved forgiving him for his antics as well.

I'm just going to read this.piece from the judgment of Mr Justice Nicklin.It says, in assessing Prince Harry's evidence overall, it was apparent that he wished the court to understand the personal impact of the matters at issue, in issue.At times this led him beyond giving factual evidence in advancing arguments on the issues and exchanges followed with Mr White Casey.He was the barrister for Associated Newspapers in that vein.As I indicated to Prince Harry at the time, that is not uncommon.

Many litigants feel a strong instinct to argue their case themselves.However, when giving evidence, that is not a burden they are required to carry.Richard Kaye, I mean, it's a sense that really this is a passionate man who feels wronged, but isn't really going about it in the right way.

I think that's a very good summing up of it.He was very passionate in his evidence.He was also angry at times.I felt that sometimes these were clouding his judgment in many ways.He also demonstrated an incredible lack of understanding about how his own royal world worked.All the people employed by him and his brother and his family to speak on their behalf to the media.

He failed to grasp that that was their job and wouldn't accept, for example, when it was put to him on multiple occasions, that that must surely have come from within the royal household, for example.always sort of fell back to this default position that no, the journalists must have obtained it by unauthorised means, when it was plainly not the case.And the judge was not persuaded by any of that.

And I think, Charlotte, it's a good time to discuss that, yes, some of the stories were, and it says in the judgement too, they were personal, but the question here is whether they were gathered by illegal methods.And journalists have a wide range of techniques to find stories that are not illegal, and more people perhaps speak to journalists than sometimes the subjects realise.

I was taken aback during this case that Harry doesn't understand how stories leak.He said, my circle wasn't leaky.I'm afraid people do gossip.And Meghan and Harry particularly, they're such controversial, unusual members of the royal family that people can't help themselves.And you know, gossip spreads.And I couldn't believe that he doesn't understand that.

He really doesn't understand that.He thinks his friends don't leak.And the other thing that was particularly pertinent in my case was that You know, in the early 2010s and 2011, we were in our 20s.I'm the same age as Harry.We were in our 20s and people were out on the town drinking and gossiping and being loose -lipped because, you know, we weren't all going to libraries every day or, you know, going to yoga classes.We were partying on the clubbing scene of London and people gossip, people talk.

I think it's fair to say we're the subject of a fair amount of speculation and story during this case.You were put in a rather difficult position.Tell us a little bit about that, what you can say and how you feel about that.

I was incensed by this idea that his friendship circle wasn't leaky because I was part of the extended, for a very brief moment in time, I was part of that extended circle.And I remember how indiscriminate he was.You know, for example, he slid into my DMs.I didn't ask him to.He added me on Facebook.you know, he did that out of the blue.

My name was on there, he called me by my surname, my nickname Griffs.Then two years later, portray himself as this bastion of privacy and self -protection was just a nonsense.So I felt I had to point that out by bringing up my Facebook messages from 2011 and nobody should have to see their Facebook messages from 2011.But it had to be done and I'm afraid I would never have done it.I would never have done it if he hadn't dragged me to the High Court in front of a judge, in front of Richard, in front of my friends and family and other journalists.So I had to defend my integrity.

And that meant dragging some uncomfortable messages that you now get dragged through the comments about?

Yeah, and of course, I felt taken aback by some of the comments, but it's to be expected.I'm a journalist.I get it.I felt that his messages were a little bit more embarrassing than mine because, you know, he alluded to finding charity fundraising for his father boring, which I thought was astonishing admission at the time.And I'd slightly forgotten about.I really hadn't read these messages for years.

I had to dig them out through my Facebook, by the way.And there they were.And when I reread them, I thought, gosh, this is quite shocking.of course, very helpful for the case.But no, he spoke about, you know, being hung over behind the wheel and, you know, partying all night.You know, he was very open.

Now we're going to just move on and get into some of the nitty -gritty of this case.Prince Harry relied on 14 articles in his claim written between 2001 and 2013 by various associated newspaper journalists.He claims that these were based on unlawful information gathering and focus, I'm quoting here, primarily in a highly intrusive and damaging way on the relationships which he formed or rather tried to form duringthose years prior to meeting his now wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex.I think in the judgement it was suggested that suspicion is not proof, paranoia is not proof, you really do need to present some sort of evidence.

Well it's called evidence, and there was no evidence, just because, and this was really at the crux of the entire case, all the other pleaded cases too, were built on an assumption that because other newspapers, as Charlotte's referred to, have been found guilty or have accepted that their journalists did phone hacking, then we at the Daily Mail must have done so.Now I worked at the Mail for a very long time and I maintained that I have never in all my years here ever seen or heard of that kind of activity going on on this newspaper.There is a different culture on a mid -market paper like the Mail and the Mail on Sunday than there is on what we call the red top tabloids.And there was a fundamental flaw in Harry and his co -defendants' case in their failure to either accept that or realise it.

Yeah, and one thing I'd just like to add to that is a really good example is the notebooks.So we had to produce all our notebooks, and because we've been incredibly well trained at the Mail, nearly all of us had full sets of notebooks going all those years.I had every single notebook.Some of them were completely watermarked and had coffee stains and were all mouldy, but they were all there.And that obviously helped us a great deal in the case.You know, we're highly trained at the mail.

We're good journalists.

And there is the sort of ethical tightrope that you have to walk as a reporter.Charlotte, I know you used an example of a story involving Prince William and Catherine.What can you tell us about that and what do you think that showed?

Well, I included that because I knew it was harmless to bring it up because it was about the birth of Prince George and how Prince George was born.So I knew, you know, I wouldn't be stepping on Catherine or William's toes and I would never wish to do that.But I did, once on a social weekend, find out that Catherine was expecting whom we now know as George and I cited that as an example of how, something Harry may never have considered, I don't think he'd have been aware of this, but sometimes we decide what goes in the newspaper.Sometimes we say, oh God, Harry, I'd hate to read that.That'll make him look really bad.What a fool for telling all his friends about X, Y, or Z. And actually, because I've got a conscience, I won't put that in.

And in the example of Catherine and William, I had a conscience and I thought, well, clearly, He's told his friends, I was in the room at the time, it was a Friday night, I worked for the mail on Sunday, I could have told the mail on Sunday, the next day, in time for Sunday, and I didn't, and I'm very glad I didn't, because she was hospitalized on the Monday, and then it was revealed, and obviously I've got three children, every woman has a right to decide, who knows when, about pregnancy, so I kept that under my hat.

Yes, Richard, this idea that reporters are vindictive and want to just get any story out, whatever the cost, it isn't familiar, is it?

Well, you know, we're human beings and in Charlotte's case she was managing an extremely delicate situation.She was on the one hand, for this pivotal period, part of Harry's wider friendship group and she was privy to all sorts of highly privileged information, which in our language makes great stories, but also might jeopardise that relationship, that friendship she was building.And I've been in that situation, so I quite understand how you managed it, and you did the right thing.And you were right not to run that story.

As we understand it, Richard, Harry was introduced to the KC here, David Sherbourne, at the house in the south of France of the lateElton John and David Furnish, is that correct?

That's absolutely correct and crucial because Sir Elton and Mr Furnish were also claimants in the case.So there was this coming together in the summer of 2019, when Harry and Meghan, under considerable pressure, still living in the UK, by the way, at that time, wanted to get away from what they thought was the stressful life they were living in London under constant paparazzi harassment, or so they claimed.And Elton invited them down to his house in the south of France, up in the hills above Nice.And by all accounts, they had a very nice relationship.relaxing time and on their last day there they met David Sherborne.Now David Sherborne is a very famous lawyer in in the UK and he has acted in all the major phone hacking cases that have taken place in London and he acted in this case too and during the course of that evening Harry and Sherborne got talking and Harry laid out his long complaints about media harassment, as he viewed it, that he and Meghan had to put up with, but also this twin complaint was that the royal household, his family in other words, would do nothing about them, and that they always said, they're there, old boy, just take no notice of it.

Well, Harry was at that stage burning up with rage about what he perceived to be the invasion of his privacy, and Sherbourne offered a solution in Harry's eyes to all this.Why don't you find your own lawyers, because at that stage Harry was using royal household lawyers, and we'll take it from there.And that is exactly what happened.And so suddenly, Harry became a pivotal figure.

Charlotte, just to pick up on something that Richard was saying there.Prince Harry's perceived notion that he was under harassment from the media, that is something that is that is rejected by many in the media, isn't it?

Yes, look, nobody's saying that in Diana's era there were paparazzi and it was awful and even when Catherine was dating William there's a famous video of her walking down a street in Chelsea and she is being chased but that died out a long time ago, rightly so.And you just don't get, you do not get people, paparazzi sitting outside people's houses anymore, following their cars down the street.For example, where has Harry been for the last week?We think it's Portugal, we don't know.Are there pictures of his children on a beach?Of course there aren't.

Are there pictures of him really even staying in whatever hotel he's in?We don't know.Nobody is following him around with a camera.It's just something that thankfully died out many years ago.

There is a fear on Harry's behalf, and if we just try to understand a little bit about his motivations and why we're here, he fears what happened to his mother.for fooling his wife, Megan.Can you tell us a bit more about that?

He has cited this on frequent occasions where he talks about, you know, I can't stand by and let the same thing that happened to my mother happen to Megan's.What does he mean by that?I mean, what happened to his mother is that she died in a terrible tragedy in an unnecessary car accident in central Paris nearly 30 years ago.Harry, for very honourable reasons in many ways, blames the activities of the paparazzi.And who funds the paparazzi, in his view?Well, the newspapers and the magazines that buy their pictures.

What he's failed to take into account, or what he, some might say, cynically overlooks, is the fact that thedriver of the car is in which Diana hurtled to her death, was drunk, certainly over the limit in terms of alcohol, and was speeding, and lost control of a car he was unfamiliar with, and that's what led to the accident.Yes, I'm not taking away the fact that the paparazzi were in hot pursuit, but there was no need for a hot pursuit.The paparazzi didn't represent any danger, to Diana that night in August 1997.They merely wanted to take a photograph of her.OK, she and Dodi didn't want a photograph, but Diana got all this.

She hated the way that drivers outside, royal drivers she was familiar with, would speed around to try and shake off photographers.That was not her way of dealing it.

It was the mail which played a major role in securing a sort of new compact between Fleet Street, British newspapers here, and Buckingham Palace.Is it fair to say that that agreement might have benefited Harry?

Well, it was an agreement that most certainly did benefit Harry.It was an agreement set up to protect William and Harry and it did come in the aftermath of tragedy.You know, we all had to look at ourselves in the event after Princess Diana's death and acknowledge that the activities of the paparazzi, and yes, we in the newspaper business were funding them up to a point, must have been a contributory factor.And the mail very much led the field in gathering together all the other newspaper titles, broadsheet and tabloid, to agree a deal, if you like, with the palace.And this was that for the duration of William and Harry's education, however long that would be, we would not commission or send photographersor reporters to cover this.

to observe them during their day -to -day schooling and then university.And that was a very successful deal and was very well patrolled and kept in place.I have to say that the only people who were not part of it were the foreign and European and American media in particular, who took no notice of any such deal.But we in the British press did.And it is sad for me, looking back all these years later, that Harry makes no acknowledgement of that.and yet turns his fire constantly on the activities of the Fleet Street newspapers.

And that still holds that deal, Charlotte, with the younger generation of royals and were Harry and Meghan living in the UK, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet would be given the same, afforded the same protection?

Oh, absolutely.We hear lots of things, nice things, really, about the Wales children at Lambroke and what they're up to, and we don't even consider printing them.It doesn't even get to the point where we pitch it as a story to our editors.It's just, oh, that's nice to hear.Leave it be.These children deserve absolute privacy, let alone taking a photo of them or printing a photo of them.

It just would never happen.And Harry and Meghan's obsession with hiding their children's faces, I think, is bizarre because We would just never print them, you know, without their permission anyway.

After the verdict, Paul Dacre, who is editor -in -chief of Associated Newspaper, former editor of the Daily Mail, made this statement.

Four years ago, lawyers for Prince Harry, Doreen Lawrence and Elton John accused the Mail in a blaze of publicity of placing bugs in homes, cars, cafes and landline phones.We described those charges some related to stories that were over 30 years old as lurid and preposterous.Today, in what was a momentous victory for the Mail, the High Court dismissed every single one of the 97 claims.That is an overwhelming vindication of our journalism.The Mail's famous front page naming five thugs as Stephen Lawrence's murderers could have seen me jailed for contempt of court.Instead, it triggered the Macpherson inquiry and the eventual jailing of two of the killers.

Stephen's father, Neville, says he owes the male everything.Why Baroness Lawrence, for whom we have always had profound respect and sympathy, chose to turn on both the paper and the brilliant reporter who campaigned for justice for her son for over two decades, is something I will never be able to comprehend.Prince Harry wrote a sad book which boasted about his killing of 25 Taliban, his drug -taking and, in cringe -making detail, how he lost his virginity.There isn't a laundry in the cosmos big enough to wash all the dirty linen he has aired about his own family.For him to complain about his privacy being invaded takes not just the biscuit, but the whole tin.Poor Harry.

I feel sorry for the way a confused and angry young man has been drawn into this case.The bitter irony is that his mother, Diana, liked the male.We were her paper.We took her side in her acrimonious break -up with Charles.She and I would speak and meet.The male's superb royal reporter was her friend and confidant.

The truth is that this trumped -up attitudewhich has cost well over £50 million and wasted a huge amount of valuable court time, should never have been brought to trial.That it did raises profoundly disturbing questions about the conduct of elements of the legal profession.Today's verdict is not just a victory for Associated's magnificent journalists, but several of whom have had a terrible toll imposed on their health and lives, but a free press generally.Make no mistake, this was a conspiracy supported by Haktov to destroy a paper.Financed by the orgy -loving racist Max Mosley and involving the actor Hugh Grant, it was also a sinister bid to resuscitate Leveson 2 and impose statutory regulation on the press which, even now, is rearing its ugly head in Labour's media green paper.

Some of the allegations made by Harry's lawyers against the Mail involved Peter Mandelson and Geoffrey Epstein.They were rejected by the court.But remember, it was the power of the Mail's journalism that, not once, but twice, resulted in Mandelson being sacked as a minister.And it was the Mail on Sunday's exclusive picture of Prince Andrew with his arm around 17 -year -old Virginia Dufresne in Ghislaine Maxwell's home, that ultimately resulted in justice for Epstein's underage victims.Such justice only happened, as with Stephen Lawrence, because of the actions of a free press.

Paul Dacre there.You touched on it at the start, Charlotte.How's thistrial impacted you, do you think, on a personal level?

We journalists are very well versed in the old rule that if you dish it out, you have to be able to take it.So nobody's getting out the tiny violin.We're trying really hard to be stoic.and not play the victim in all this.But it's obviously been incredibly difficult on our marriages and our home lives, on our wider family, on our mothers in some cases, you know, because those kind of people that care about us are really, really worried about us.And we might be stiff upper lip about it all, but, you know, it has impacted us and it's dragged on for such a long time.

So today's been such a relief.

Richard Kaye, there is the question, should this ever have got to a point case even being brought?

It's the vital question and the answer is of course no, it should never have been brought.There was no evidence of the malpractice that Harry and the other claimants alleged.It's astonishing in many ways that it was even brought to court at all and that it went as far as it did.It has been a cloud hanging over us all for many years, but don't get out your tiny violins.As Charlotte says, we don't expect sympathy from our viewers and our readers.However, This was in many ways a travesty.

The case was fundamentally flawed from the outset.Had it been a criminal trial, and it wasn't, this was a civil case, so there's a distinct distinction there, then I don't think it would have ever made it to court.However, it did, and we've come through on the other side.But I hope that Harry and his fellow claimants can reflect on all this because they put themselves through an awful ordeal as well.They chose to relive things and they chose to have it framed in a certain way.We're obviously very relieved here at the Mail that it's all over, but it has been a very long time waiting for this day.

Indeed.Well look, I want to say thank you both so much to Charlotte and to Richard.And thank you for tuning in to this special episode of Palace Confidential.A reminder you of course should subscribe to this channel for more Royal content like our regular Palace Confidential show which will be back with you this Thursday.Thanks again to Charlotte and Richard for discussing what has been a sensitive topic for the very first time.We'll see you soon on Palace Confidential.