Isla Campbell on the Leveson Inquiry, the Phone Hacking Settlement, and Whether the Press-Palace Relationship Has Actually Changed
The relationship between the Royal Family and the British press is one of the more dysfunctional in modern British public life, which is a competitive field. It has produced, in roughly forty years, the systematic phone hacking of royal private communications by tabloid newspapers whose editors authorized it; a formal public inquiry whose recommendations were not implemented; a legal settlement by the Mirror group worth millions of pounds; two memoirs that said aloud things about this relationship that had previously only been said in lawyers’ offices and green rooms; and a continuing arrangement in which the palace provides access and the press provides coverage in a mutual dependency that neither party finds satisfactory and neither party has found a way to exit.
The phone hacking scandal — revealed comprehensively by Nick Davies in the Guardian and producing the Leveson Inquiry that began in 2011 — established that tabloid journalists had routinely accessed private voicemails of senior royals, and that the practice had been known to, if not authorized by, senior editorial figures at multiple tabloids. Prince William and the late Queen both received settlements. The industry reformed in the specific way that industries reform when the alternative is compulsory regulation: superficially and with maximum resistance to verification.
The Harry Question
Prince Harry’s decision to pursue litigation against tabloid publishers rather than settling is significant not primarily for what it revealed — much of which had already been established — but for what it demonstrated about the options available to individuals with sufficient resources to pursue them. The settlement figures in the cases that were settled suggest that the tabloids’ liability exposure was substantial. The question of what the press-palace relationship looks like after the litigation is resolved is one that the Press Gazette and the media industry have been reluctant to address directly because the answer implicates almost everyone involved in arrangements that nobody particularly wants to examine.
More royal media analysis at The London Prat.
SOURCE: http://prat.UK
