Prince Harry claims court victories. But is he winning the larger war with the British media?

Britain's Prince Harry arrives in the gardens of Buckingham Palace in London, Jan. 16, 2020. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth, File)

London — The mission of Prince Harry to tame the British media has produced results in court.

But the jury is out on whether it will have a broader impact or be just another chapter — or headline — in the long history of tabloids behaving badly.

Harry received an unprecedented apology from Rupert Murdoch’s flagship U.K. tabloid on Wednesday, and previously won in a court judgment that condemned the publishers of the Daily Mirror for “widespread and habitual” phone hacking.

In settling his case against the publisher of The Sun on the eve of a trial at the High Court, the Duke of Sussex claimed a “monumental victory” that included an acknowledgement of wrongdoing, a substantial payment and an apology for intruding on his life and that of his late mother, Princess Diana.

But it didn’t provide the public reckoning he had sought over allegations that Murdoch’s top lieutenants, including his son, James Murdoch, and Will Lewis, now CEO at The Washington Post, were part of a cover-up that included purging 30 million emails.

While News Group continues to vigorously dispute those claims, the settlement has buoyed advocates seeking accountability of the media.

With News Group Newspaper’s acknowledgement of wrongdoing at The Sun, which it had never admitted, they are pushing for investigations that could include a sequel to the government’s 2011 Leveson Inquiry into phone hacking or police investigations into allegations that news executives committed perjury by lying under oath about the scandal during the inquiry.

“You cannot have public confidence in a public inquiry if people don’t tell the truth under oath and there’s no consequence,” said Dr. Evan Harris, a former Liberal Democrat member of Parliament who was a consultant to Harry’s legal team.

“The admission that there was unlawful information gathering at The Sun, which Harry extracted through his brave stand saying he will not bend to offers of cash only, is a huge step on the way to getting sunlight in that area and getting the accountability that he and we all want,” Harris said.

Some media observers see the victories as significant for Harry, but unlikely to bring wider change.

“Despite the overwhelming victories Prince Harry has achieved to date, it appears unlikely the government will engage in a ‘Leveson mark 2’ inquiry into the British press,” said media lawyer Kishan Pattni, who wasn’t involved in the case. “The national priorities are elsewhere and the feeling may be that these matters are historical and do not represent the current practices of media in 2025.”

The left-of-center Labour government that took power last year has previously thrown cold water on the idea of reviving a second phase to Leveson, which was dropped by the Conservatives when they were in power.

Harry’s litigation revolves around voicemail interception by journalists that blew up into a full-blown scandal in 2011 and forced Murdoch to shutter News of the World after it was discovered that its reporters hacked the phone of Milly Dowler, a murdered 13-year-old schoolgirl, while police were searching for her in 2002.

It later emerged that reporters were going beyond using unsophisticated techniques to eavesdrop on voicemail messages for scoops and hiring private investigators to tail subjects, tap phones, bug cars and use deception to obtain medical and financial records.

Harry’s aim to reform the media is much more personal and deeper than the headlines that dogged him through his youth as papers documented everything from his broken thumb to his broken heart.

He blames the media for the death of his mother, who was killed in a car crash in 1997 while being chased by paparazzi in Paris. He also blames them for the persistent attacks on his wife, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, that led them to leave royal life and move to the U.S. in 2020.

Patience Wheatcroft, the former editor of the Sunday Telegraph and Europe edition of the Wall Street Journal, said that she didn’t think Harry’s litigation would change the culture in journalism, because it has already changed dramatically in the years since the phone hacking came to light.

Wheatcroft said that another inquiry isn’t needed, but police should be investigating to see if anyone committed perjury or other crimes.

“It’s quite clear that criminal acts were being committed,” Wheatcroft told the BBC. “And I think the police certainly have accepted that their investigations in the first instance may have left quite a lot to be desired, which is why people like Prince Harry have had to resort to bringing their own legal actions.”

Police previously investigated phone hacking at News of the World, leading to prison time for the paper’s royal editor Clive Goodman and a private eye in 2007, and former editor Andy Coulson in 2013.

But in 2015, prosecutors said that there would be no more criminal cases against Murdoch’s U.K. company or its employees, or against 10 people under investigation from the rival Mirror Group Newspapers, including former Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan.

Harry’s co-claimant in the litigation, Tom Watson, a former Labour member of Parliament who received an apology for News of the World journalists snooping on him when he was investigating phone hacking, said that they would deliver a dossier of evidence to the Metropolitan Police in London.

The police force said that it would respond to any correspondence it received, but had no current investigations underway on the matter, a spokesperson said.

Pattni, the media lawyer, said that attitudes about publicly reexamining the media’s past bad acts could change if Harry’s remaining case against the publisher of the Daily Mail goes to trial as scheduled next year and exposes other misconduct.

But with the Mirror win and The Sun settlement, it remains to be seen if those allegations will be tested in court.

“The Daily Mail ... must be quaking in their boots, because it’s not clear how they will change the tide of these runs of success,” Harris said.

Brian Melley, The Associated Press