Prince Harry’s beef with the British tabloids ends in spectacular failure
When Prince Harry picks a fight, he goes for big targets.
His own royal family to start with, but perhaps even more daring, the vengeful and intrusive British press.
Prince Harry now faces an enormous legal bill after a spectacular loss against the publisher of the Daily Mail. 60 Minutes
He’s taken on, and won, legal battles against two major tabloid newspaper groups and thought he was set for a third victory, this time against the publishers of the Daily Mail.
Nicole Lampert, the former showbiz editor at the Daily Mail, is one of the journalists said to have broken the law to get her inside information, an allegation she strongly denies.
“I think newspapers today, all sorts of press, we are breaking stories and we are holding the powerful to account,” Lampert said.
“They do not like that, and they have tried to use these cases to make it more difficult for us to tell our stories.
Private investigator Gavin Burrows denies blagging to illegally gather information on Prince Harry’s ex-girlfriend Chelsy Davy. 60 Minutes
“So, of course, it’s an important victory for press freedom.”
Lampert was accused of illegally gathering information relating to seven stories she published.
“Four of them were about Sadie Frost, two of them were about Liz Hurley and one was about Elton John.
“I’ve never hacked anyone.”
Instead, Lampert says she used core journalism skills to get her stories - hard work and well-cultivated contacts.
For her piece exposing the confidential details of the divorce settlement between actors Sadie Frost and Jude Law, she said she relied on a source close to Sadie.
“I can understand why she might suspect that somebody was giving the information to the newspapers, which is exactly what was happening,” Lampert said.
Journalist Nicole Lampert was sued by Prince Harry’s team for using information illegally sourced to write articles for the Daily Mail. 60 Minutes
“And we have all the time and you’re a journalist, you’ll know, you have people that are close to a situation for different motivations sometimes because they’re being paid or sometimes because they bear a grudge.
“They will give information to newspapers.
“And Sadie, it’s not nice for her that she had someone within her inner circle.
“I can understand why that might be upsetting, but that doesn’t mean that it was illegal.”
But celebrated media law expert and human rights barrister Geoffrey Robertson recognises, while the detail might be trivial, that doesn’t automatically mean it was gathered illegally.
“It couldn’t be proved that they were collected unlawfully, that was the bottom line,” Robertson said.
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