Why Prince Harry's Court Blow May Leave Him 'Helpless and Hopeless'

Prince Harry's attempt to prove Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid The Sun hacked phones has ended in failure on a technicality and is likely to inflame his lifelong frustration with the media.

The Duke of Sussex sued News Group Newspapers alleging they listened in on his voicemail messages, and those of his friends, as well as other unlawful practices.

A judge at the High Court in London threw out the phone hacking claims but sent the remaining allegations through to trial, creating a mixed impression of partial success and partial failure.

A spokesperson said, in a statement released to Newsweek: "The High Court has today, in a significant victory for News Group Newspapers ("NGN"), dismissed The Duke of Sussex's phone hacking claims against both the News of the World and The Sun."

"In arguing his case," the spokesperson continued, "the Duke of Sussex had alleged a 'secret agreement' existed between him/Buckingham Palace and NGN which stopped NGN from asserting that the Duke's claim had been brought too late.

"The Judge, Mr Justice Fancourt, found his claims in relation to the alleged 'secret agreement' were not plausible or credible.

"It is quite clear there was never any such agreement and it is only the Duke who has ever asserted there was.

"Mr Justice Fancourt then dismissed the Duke's phone hacking claims against both the News of the World and The Sun on the grounds that the claim had been brought too late."

A cursory glance at Harry's own witness statement to the High Court demonstrates the strength of his feeling that the media have been allowed to get away with wrongdoing.

The reason he lost on phone hacking was because the judge ruled he ran out of time to file his case, which should have been submitted no more than six years after he first became aware he might have had a claim.

The fact it was dismissed on a technicality means he will not get an answer either way about whether The Sun did hack him, and he will almost certainly be left believing he was right and simply thwarted by red tape.

His witness statement, signed in March and seen by Newsweek, read: "My view is how can anybody possibly trust, be influenced by, or accept a media organisation, that enjoys the liberties of free press, when its senior executives and Board cover up the truth by making false denials (i.e. lying), concealing documents, creating fake email chains, and destroying evidence (including both emails and computer hardware) and then have the gall to try to 'strike out' people's legitimate claims on the basis that they should have known they had a claim much earlier.

"How on earth could these people have known the extent of their claims, when NGN [The Sun's publisher News Group Newspapers] has gone to such great lengths to conceal the truth and destroy evidence?

"When they have the powers that they have, and where even the police and the government of the day are scared to hold them accountable or seek justice against them, they can truly believe they are above the law.

"And if they're above the law, then it's the general public and the country that suffers. It's really that simple.

"It does make you feel completely helpless and hopeless, and if that's how it feels to someone in my position—having grown up with advisers and secretaries to try and manage press relations—I can only imagine what that feels like for everybody else."

The mention of a denial is likely a reference to the fact Murdoch executives have acknowledged his now defunct Sunday tabloid the News of the World hacked phones but have always denied The Sun did too.

The phone hacking scandal closed the NotW and led to successful criminal prosecutions of journalists and executives, though the most senior, Rebekah Brooks, was acquitted and returned as chief executive.

At the point Harry wrote those words he did not yet know the judge would side with the newspaper over him, and in reality his impotent fury only partially conveys the emotional stakes.

It is easy to see why Harry feels the media are beyond accountability, he has spoken before about his frustration the paparazzi who followed his mother on the night she died in a 1997 Paris car crash were not criminally prosecuted.

Harry told his May 2021 mental health docu-series The Me You Can't See: "I was so angry with what happened to her and the fact that there was no justice at all.

"Nothing came from that. The same people who chased her into the tunnel photographed her dying in the backseat of that car."

However, he has also previously said the NGN lawsuit, and another against Mirror Group Newspapers, were filed so that he could stand shoulder to shoulder with Meghan Markle as she sued The Mail on Sunday over her private letter.

His feeling the U.K. press mistreated Meghan was clearly still in his mind when he drafted his witness statement: "Having experienced what I have during my lifetime, as outlined above, and also during the last six years in terms of the constant harassment (online and off), intimidation and abuse that my wife and I have suffered at the hands of the tabloids, this sort of appalling behaviour doesn't really surprise me."

And he said that by the end of 2016 Meghan "had already suffered a huge amount of harassment, intimidation and racist and sexist abuse at the hands of the tabloid press, including The Sun and The Sun on Sunday, despite them having only found out about our relationship two months previously.

"I desperately appealed to the institution for its help in stopping this vile abuse but nothing was forthcoming."

Harry once appeared a formidable litigant with money to burn and an expert team but having lost his case over his police protection to the U.K. Home Office early this year he now appears more vulnerable.

And after the judge's latest ruling, it was The Sun that was left celebrating, with its past denial in relation to phone hacking intact.

Jack Royston is chief royal correspondent for Newsweek, based in London. You can find him on Twitter at @jack_royston and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.

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