Prince Harry & Meghan announce legal action against tabloid Newspaper

[Gimme More 35,410]

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have announced they are taking legal action against the Mail on Sunday after the newspaper allegedly unlawfully published one of the duchess’ private letters.

In a lengthy and highly personal statement published on the royal couple’s official website, Prince Harry said they had been driven to take legal action after the “painful” impact of “relentless propaganda” against his wife from the British tabloid press.

Referencing press coverage of his mother Princess Diana, the duke said his “deepest fear is history repeating itself”.

He wrote: “I’ve seen what happens when someone I love is commoditised to the point that they are no longer treated or seen as a real person.

“I lost my mother and now I watch my wife falling victim to the same powerful forces.”

A spokeswoman for the firm claimed the “intrusive” publication of the letter was part of the media group’s campaign to write “false and deliberately derogatory stories about her, as well as her husband”.

The legal proceedings in the Chancery Division of the High Court are being privately funded by Harry and Meghan.

Depending on the court ruling, proceeds from any damages will be donated to an anti-bullying charity.

In his statement, Harry said he and Meghan believed in “media freedom and objective, truthful reporting” as a “cornerstone of democracy”.

However he added: “Unfortunately, my wife has become one of the latest victims of a British tabloid press that wages campaigns against individuals with no thought to the consequences – a ruthless campaign that has escalated over the past year, throughout her pregnancy and while raising our newborn son.

“There is a human cost to this relentless propaganda, specifically when it is knowingly false and malicious, and though we have continued to put on a brave face – as so many of you can relate to – I cannot begin to describe how painful it has been.”

Harry said the couple, who are currently on a royal tour of South Africa, had been unable to correct “continual misrepresentations” in the press.

He said “positive” coverage of the tour exposed “the double standards of this specific press pack that has vilified her almost daily for the past nine months; they have been able to create lie after lie at her expense simply because she has not been visible while on maternity leave.

“She is the same woman she was a year ago on our wedding day, just as she is the same woman you’ve seen on this Africa tour.”

The duke added: “For these select media this is a game, and one that we have been unwilling to play from the start.

“I have been a silent witness to her private suffering for too long. To stand back and do nothing would be contrary to everything we believe in.”

He explained that the alleged unlawful publication of the private letter was done in “an intentionally destructive manner” to “manipulate” readers.

Harry claimed readers were misled by “strategically omitting select paragraphs, specific sentences, and even singular words to mask the lies they had perpetuated for over a year”.

He added: “There comes a point when the only thing to do is to stand up to this behaviour, because it destroys people and destroys lives.

“Put simply, it is bullying, which scares and silences people. We all know this isn’t acceptable, at any level.

“We won’t and can’t believe in a world where there is no accountability for this.”

Go Harry and Meghan   the hate towards her is so disgusting by the tabloids!

[JustinTrudeau 2,419]

I don't understand the hate for Meghan or why she's so heavily targeted by the tabloids. 

Good to hear that he's standing up to the press, because this is just plain disgusting.

[Gimme More 35,410]

1 minute ago, JustinTrudeau said:

I don't understand the hate for Meghan or why she's so heavily targeted by the tabloids. 

Good to hear that he's standing up to the press, because this is just plain disgusting.

i genuinely think it's just british tabloids being unfair/racist  as they non-stop praise Kate and William and for some reason they treat Meghan differently just because she wants more privacy.

but ALL the people i know and have encountered think Meghan is great, i only see negative stuff on these tabloids!

[Epione 10,896]

Tabloids are trash. Glad they are doing something about it.

[Sassy McSass 814]

Good for them. I can’t imagine what must be like to read all that negative stuff about yourself everyday. And those tabloids are disgusting. They should have learned after what happened to Harry’s mother.

[Red 98,225]

15 minutes ago, JustinTrudeau said:

I don't understand the hate for Meghan or why she's so heavily targeted by the tabloids. 

Good to hear that he's standing up to the press, because this is just plain disgusting.

They’re jealous cause they are not making out with Harry every day

[Wolf Boy 3,279]

24 minutes ago, JustinTrudeau said:

I don't understand the hate for Meghan or why she's so heavily targeted by the tabloids. 

Good to hear that he's standing up to the press, because this is just plain disgusting.

She’s  an outsider to the press there, and she’s  black, it makes her “the freak”, it’s embarrassing how the press cover her. 

[Madling 1,981]

3 minutes ago, Wolf Boy said:

She’s  an outsider to the press there, and she’s  black, it makes her “the freak”, it’s embarrassing how the press cover her. 

Talk about an overreaction.  She's not seen as a freak. And she's barely black. She's a divorced actress that Harry barely knew when they hit married. They had the fairytale wedding and everyone loved them and then as with everything they got backlash. Spending taxpayers millions on doing up their "cottage"  with like 5k gold baths etc was not a good look. Banging on about climate change while regularly using private jets was not a good look. Blocking out 40 seats and getting your security to harass Wimbledon audience who didn't even know who she was was not a good look. Its them making out that any criticism = racism is what's keeping the whole thing going. 

Meghan needs to knuckle down and earn respect just like Kate had to do. Kate wasn't always liked by the British public either. She was made fun of and mocked for stalking William and snaring him at St Andrews. That her parents were commoners who set out to social climb. And there was even scandal about her dodgy uncle. Her sister was mocked regularly.  Didn't see her whining about being bullied. She got on with it, did a good job, represented the Queen well and earned respect. 

They even admitted in the letter that they had great press coverage this week. So how are they targets? If they put the work in and are not  hypocritical then they will get the praise and recognition they so desperate seem to want. 

 

And honestly comparing it to Diana's problems with the paparazzi was super manipulative and unnecessary. 

[Dominic 11,922]

So the royals are going against the daily mail? Interesting 

[StrawberryBlond 14,922]

I can't find this letter when I went looking for the article in question. I assume it got removed from publication. Now I really want to know what it said because it must be juicy. I've got a feeling it's maybe Thomas's (true) public claim that he paid for her education that she's claiming she paid for herself. Maybe she sent him a letter telling him to never under any circumstances speak to the press again or something. Or maybe that he can now never see Archie. It must be something big if Harry had to shut it down.

2 hours ago, JustinTrudeau said:

I don't understand the hate for Meghan or why she's so heavily targeted by the tabloids. 

Good to hear that he's standing up to the press, because this is just plain disgusting.

2 hours ago, Gimme More said:

i genuinely think it's just british tabloids being unfair/racist  as they non-stop praise Kate and William and for some reason they treat Meghan differently just because she wants more privacy.

but ALL the people i know and have encountered think Meghan is great, i only see negative stuff on these tabloids!

2 hours ago, Wolf Boy said:

She’s  an outsider to the press there, and she’s  black, it makes her “the freak”, it’s embarrassing how the press cover her. 

A lot of non-Brits don't really seem to understand why so many of us don't like her and think the press are treating her bad. I can assure you that everything that anything negative reported on concerning this woman is all her own doing and it's nothing to do with race. I was neutral about her at the beginning but then the red flags started showing and a matter of days after the engagement, when the press exposed all her fame hungry past, the red flags came on an avalanche. Here is just a small rundown of a lot of problems:

- The royal family is funded by taxpayers and Meghan's spending budget is out of control. She wears new designer outfits every day, all paid for by us. She never wears anything twice. She is the highest spending royal in Europe, even though she's only married to the 6th in line. She spends more than princesses and queens. She spent £460k ($508k) on clothes in 2018. To give a comparison, the second biggest spender was the Crown Princess Mary of Denmark, who only spent £89k ($112k). Kate Middleton was £68k ($86k), by the way. And she married to the 2nd in line. Just let that sink in for a moment.

- Meghan abandoned her entire family, except her mother. She was super tight with her dad right into adulthood, there's so many photos of them together at baseball games, on her graduation day, the whole nine yards. He raised her and brought her onto the set of Married With Children after school. She talked about him positively in an interview before she met Harry and never said a word about her mother. But when he went bankrupt and no longer fit her image, she never wanted to see him again. She doesn't want to see the rest of the family either because they're also not the image she wants. Even her uncle, who's a perfectly respectable man and even helped her get her temporary placement at the American embassy in Argentina, didn't get a wedding invite. She didn't even have any childhood friends at her wedding. It's a major red flag when someone has cut basically everyone out their life.

- It was odd in the engagement interview when she said that she didn't even know who Harry was initially. That was the first ever thing that gave me pause. Prince William was a major heartthrob when she was growing up and naturally, there was a connection there with his brother. Princess Diana was a superstar in America and Meghan was 16 when she died, so she was present throughout all the news coverage of her death at the time. I was only 7 at the time and I remember everything about that time, including lots of mention of the 2 sons, William and Harry. There was even a batchelor-esque reality show in America called I Wanna Marry Harry a few years back where some guy posed as Harry and all these women had to vie for his affection. The royal family are the most talked about royals the world over and Harry has been one of the major stars for years. No way was she completely clueless about who he was. Someone even claimed that in one of her old videos that she put up to her Tig blog that there was a book about Diana visible in her bookcase.

- Perhaps one of the most damning pieces of evidence is how she lived in Britain briefly a few years before she met Harry and was trying to get in with the celebrity set. She was flirting with minor UK stars on their Twitter pages, like X Factor winner Matt Cardle, Oliver Chesire from the reality show, Made In Chelsea (she apparently tried to get a part on the show) and Max George from The Wanted. The socialite, Lizzie Cundy claimed that Meghan confessed to her during a meeting that she wanted to find a British celebrity man. Ashley Cole (Cheryl Cole's ex husband) was even offered up as a suggestion but Meghan was put off when she found out he was a cheater. This all points toward the idea that she was on the prowl for a rich man to keep her in luxury and make her famous and she ended up catching a bigger fish than she ever could've dreamed.

- She recently made a speech on a royal tour in Fiji where she claimed as part of her "strong independent feminist" speech that she financed her way through college with scholarships, jobs and financial aid. This is untrue. Her dad paid for it all, we've known this for ages. In Thomas's own words "I have the bank statements to prove it." This might be the worst one of all but it's hard to rank them at this stage.

And that's just the worst offending moments, there's more.

1 hour ago, Dominic said:

So the royals are going against the daily mail? Interesting 

It's not the Daily Mail, it's The Mail On Sunday. They may be related in name but Sunday papers are very different from the daily ones. They usually have different editors, a different tone, is higher priced, etc. The Sunday edition even comes with a completely different weekly tv supplement. It may be a mark on the DM brand but not the DM itself.

[Madling 1,981]

14 hours ago, StrawberryBlond said:

I can't find this letter when I went looking for the article in question. I assume it got removed from publication. Now I really want to know what it said because it must be juicy. I've got a feeling it's maybe Thomas's (true) public claim that he paid for her education that she's claiming she paid for herself. Maybe she sent him a letter telling him to never under any circumstances speak to the press again or something. Or maybe that he can now never see Archie. It must be something big if Harry had to shut it down.

A lot of non-Brits don't really seem to understand why so many of us don't like her and think the press are treating her bad. I can assure you that everything that anything negative reported on concerning this woman is all her own doing and it's nothing to do with race. I was neutral about her at the beginning but then the red flags started showing and a matter of days after the engagement, when the press exposed all her fame hungry past, the red flags came on an avalanche. Here is just a small rundown of a lot of problems:

- The royal family is funded by taxpayers and Meghan's spending budget is out of control. She wears new designer outfits every day, all paid for by us. She never wears anything twice. She is the highest spending royal in Europe, even though she's only married to the 6th in line. She spends more than princesses and queens. She spent £460k ($508k) on clothes in 2018. To give a comparison, the second biggest spender was the Crown Princess Mary of Denmark, who only spent £89k ($112k). Kate Middleton was £68k ($86k), by the way. And she married to the 2nd in line. Just let that sink in for a moment.

- Meghan abandoned her entire family, except her mother. She was super tight with her dad right into adulthood, there's so many photos of them together at baseball games, on her graduation day, the whole nine yards. He raised her and brought her onto the set of Married With Children after school. She talked about him positively in an interview before she met Harry and never said a word about her mother. But when he went bankrupt and no longer fit her image, she never wanted to see him again. She doesn't want to see the rest of the family either because they're also not the image she wants. Even her uncle, who's a perfectly respectable man and even helped her get her temporary placement at the American embassy in Argentina, didn't get a wedding invite. She didn't even have any childhood friends at her wedding. It's a major red flag when someone has cut basically everyone out their life.

- It was odd in the engagement interview when she said that she didn't even know who Harry was initially. That was the first ever thing that gave me pause. Prince William was a major heartthrob when she was growing up and naturally, there was a connection there with his brother. Princess Diana was a superstar in America and Meghan was 16 when she died, so she was present throughout all the news coverage of her death at the time. I was only 7 at the time and I remember everything about that time, including lots of mention of the 2 sons, William and Harry. There was even a batchelor-esque reality show in America called I Wanna Marry Harry a few years back where some guy posed as Harry and all these women had to vie for his affection. The royal family are the most talked about royals the world over and Harry has been one of the major stars for years. No way was she completely clueless about who he was. Someone even claimed that in one of her old videos that she put up to her Tig blog that there was a book about Diana visible in her bookcase.

- Perhaps one of the most damning pieces of evidence is how she lived in Britain briefly a few years before she met Harry and was trying to get in with the celebrity set. She was flirting with minor UK stars on their Twitter pages, like X Factor winner Matt Cardle, Oliver Chesire from the reality show, Made In Chelsea (she apparently tried to get a part on the show) and Max George from The Wanted. The socialite, Lizzie Cundy claimed that Meghan confessed to her during a meeting that she wanted to find a British celebrity man. Ashley Cole (Cheryl Cole's ex husband) was even offered up as a suggestion but Meghan was put off when she found out he was a cheater. This all points toward the idea that she was on the prowl for a rich man to keep her in luxury and make her famous and she ended up catching a bigger fish than she ever could've dreamed.

- She recently made a speech on a royal tour in Fiji where she claimed as part of her "strong independent feminist" speech that she financed her way through college with scholarships, jobs and financial aid. This is untrue. Her dad paid for it all, we've known this for ages. In Thomas's own words "I have the bank statements to prove it." This might be the worst one of all but it's hard to rank them at this stage.

And that's just the worst offending moments, there's more.

It's not the Daily Mail, it's The Mail On Sunday. They may be related in name but Sunday papers are very different from the daily ones. They usually have different editors, a different tone, is higher priced, etc. The Sunday edition even comes with a completely different weekly tv supplement. It may be a mark on the DM brand but not the DM itself.

Damn I didn't know that about her clothes budget... That's insane. She's also losing staff left, right and centre. I can't even watch the engagement interview as it's so cringy but saying she didn't know who he was was hilariously transparent. GTFO!! 

I do read some comments about her that are ridiculous and way too far, like how some mocked her for how she held the kid 🙄, those people need to get a life, but some criticism is valid and Harry is just escalating the issue by saying its bullying. 

 

Just put the work in, stop spending stupid money that isn't even hers and show the cute kid off. 

[StrawberryBlond 14,922]

32 minutes ago, Madling said:

Damn I didn't know that about her clothes budget... That's insane. She's also losing staff left, right and centre. I can't even watch the engagement interview as it's so cringy but saying she didn't know who he was was hilariously transparent. GTFO!! 

I do read some comments about her that are ridiculous and way too far, like how some mocked her for how she held the kid 🙄, those people need to get a life, but some criticism is valid and Harry is just escalating the issue by saying its bullying. 

 

Just put the work in, stop spending stupid money that isn't even hers and show the cute kid off. 

It's worth noting that Queen Letizia of Spain not only spends less but represents Spanish designers by frequently wearing Zara. That's considered a "high street" brand, aka, for normal people in the UK! In comparison, when Meghan came into more money when she got the role in Suits, she apparently threw a "Sayonara Zara" party where she gave out her old, non-designer clothes to friends because it would be nothing but luxury brands from now on. Not like this story was ever verified, but I'd totally believe it, given how she's living now. You're right about the high staff turn-over, apparently Archie's on his third nanny which is unheard of (why would a several month old infant be such a trouble?) which would definitely point to the parents being an issue more than the child. To be the nanny to a royal child is an amazing thing to put on your resume, you'll be set for life. As would a royal PA, bodyguard, etc. So why are these people leaving such a prestigious job so quickly? There can only be one reason - the employers are a nightmare. To be fair, looking back at the engagement interview, she didn't say "I didn't even know who he was" (which I thought she said), her exact words were: "I didn't know much about him." So that maybe suggests she did know of him but just that he was a royal and Diana's son and that was it. But it's still pretty contrived to say that. It was like it was a little fallback device for anyone who was understandably going to make golddigger assumptions. Obviously, her friend told her she was pairing her up with a prince and everyone knows how restricted life would be as a royal consort, so anyone who accepts such a date knows what they're letting themselves in for.

Of course, any criticism that is plain hate speech is not ok. But to be honest, I've seen next to nothing of that. 99% of it is aimed at the lavish over-spending for minor royals, the disregard for royal protocol, the politicising of the royals, the fact that the royals are turning into celebrities, the over-association with celebrities, the shutting out of her father, the subtle lies and hypocrisy. To hear Harry saying at a convention that we all need to cut back to save the planet while his wife is swanning around in expensive, taxpayer-funded clothes everyday, buying £5k copper baths for their house, doing unnecessary royal tours to promote themselves and spending thousands on private jet flights was utterly embarrassing. I don't know who's advising these two. They're either getting terrible advice or not listening to good advice. I really want to know what the Queen makes of it all, as if she doesn't have enough on her plate with the Prince Andrew scandal right now. Apart from Harry and Meghan taking a commercial flight or two, wearing some casual clothes on tour and finally showing Archie in full profile a few times (he's a cutie, don't know why they kept him hidden), I've seen no change in them amid all these months of public criticism. I've heard staunch royalists say that this union has, for the first time, made them question if they want a monarchy anymore, if this is the future of it. Some have even said it's time for a republic. I saw a great quote from someone that said: "They're lucky this isn't 1789, or we'd be going all French Revolution on their asses." But until the public stop turning up to events and start lodging letters of complaint, it's unlikely anything will change.

[Guest]

18 hours ago, Madling said:

Spending taxpayers millions on doing up their "cottage"  with like 5k gold baths etc was not a good look. Banging on about climate change while regularly using private jets was not a good look. Blocking out 40 seats and getting your security to harass Wimbledon audience who didn't even know who she was was not a good look. Its them making out that any criticism = racism is what's keeping the whole thing going. 

I agree.

Lady Diana was a whole other phenomenon in my opinion, she was loved and respected but still stalked by paparazzis. Kate is respected and yet not stalked at all, I think because Lady Di was just a whole other phenomenon, she was different, authentic, close to the people and maybe because of that much more mysterious and interesting to the public, I don't think it will happen again in the royal family. And it's true that at first they get criticism as british tabloids are ruthless and everybody knows that. The mistakes Harry and Meghan made are outlandish, and paint them as arrogant brats tbh. The Africa tour they did was probably to change their image.

Overall it's not the end of the world, bigger problems than this, I feel like these two are always whining and complaining. Meghan chose this life, she shouldve known it came with a set of rules, and it includes having to be present and show yourself to the public and photographers, keeping your whole life private is not part of the royalty game. 

[DpHitch1992 1,158]

Gotta love prince harry. Not taking **** and standing up for what is right!

You will never fall apart
Diana, you're still in our hearts
Never let you fall apart
Together we'll dance in the dark

[Lord Temptation 11,209]

Meghan is as fake as press on nails. 

She is a Hollywood gurl.

Tabloids have always been junk but Meghan has a junk past and who is she to tell others how or what to report. The diva really pushed thru.