Prince Harry privacy case: 'Extensive' phone hacking by Mirror Group newspapers was carried out
Friday 15 December 2023 12:46, UK
https://news.sky.com/story/prince-harry-privacy-case-extensive-phone-hacking-by-mirror-group-newspapers-was-carried-out-13029492
The Duke of Sussex said the ruling - in which he was awarded £140,600 in damages - was "vindicating and affirming". Coronation Street actor Michael Le Vell was also awarded £31,650 in damages after the judge found evidence of unlawful information gathering.
"Extensive" phone hacking by the Mirror Group newspapers was carried out from 2006 to 2011, a High Court judge has ruled in a privacy case brought by Prince Harry.
Judge Timothy Fancourt said that phone hacking continued "to some extent" during the Leveson Inquiry into media standards in 2011 and 2012.
The Duke of Sussex's case was "proved in part", with 15 of the 33 articles presented in court found to be the product of phone hacking or other unlawful information gathering, the judge ruled.
In a statement, Prince Harry said the ruling was "vindicating and affirming" and took aim at senior executives and editors including Piers Morgan - who was in charge at the Daily Mirror from 1995 to 2004.
The judge found Morgan knew about phone hacking at the paper.
Judge Mr Justice Fancourt went on to say the Duke's phone was probably only hacked to a modest extent and was "carefully controlled by certain people" from the end of 2003 to April 2009.
But he added there was a tendency by the Duke to assume everything was a result of hacking.
The judge awarded Prince Harry a total sum of £140,600. The sum was aggregated as directors of the newspaper group knew and "turned a blind eye and positively concealed it".
In a statement read by his lawyer David Sherborne, Prince Harry said: "The court has ruled that unlawful and criminal activities were carried out at all three Mirror Group newspaper titles - The Mirror, The Sunday Mirror and The People - on a habitual and widespread basis for over more than a decade."
He continued: "This case is not just about hacking it is about a systemic practice of unlawful and appalling behaviour followed by cover-ups and destruction of evidence the shocking scale of which can only be revealed through these proceedings.
"The court has found the Mirror Group's principle board directors, their legal department, senior executives and editors such as Piers Morgan clearly knew about or were involved in these illegal activities.
"Between them, they even went as far as lying under oath to parliament during the Leveson inquiry, to the stock exchange, and to us all ever since," he added.
Daily Mirror history..
The Daily Mirror is a British national daily tabloid newspaper.[3] Founded in 1903, it is owned by parent company Reach plc. From 1985 to 1987, and from 1997 to 2002, the title on its masthead was simply The Mirror. It had an average daily print circulation of 716,923 in December 2016, dropping to 587,803 the following year.[4] Its Sunday sister paper is the Sunday Mirror. Unlike other major British tabloids such as The Sun and the Daily Mail, the Mirror has no separate Scottish edition; this function is performed by the Daily Record and the Sunday Mail, which incorporate certain stories from the Mirror that are of Scottish significance.
Originally pitched to the middle-class reader, it was converted into a working-class newspaper after 1934, in order to reach a larger audience. It was founded by Alfred Harmsworth, who sold it to his brother Harold Harmsworth (from 1914 Lord Rothermere) in 1913. In 1963 a restructuring of the media interests of the Harmsworth family led to the Mirror becoming a part of International Publishing Corporation. During the mid-1960s, daily sales exceeded 5 million copies, a feat never repeated by it or any other daily (non-Sunday) British newspaper since.[5] The Mirror was owned by Robert Maxwell between 1984 and 1991. The paper went through a protracted period of crisis after his death before merging with the regional newspaper group Trinity in 1999 to form Trinity Mirror.