Part 2: The Press & The Royals a discussion

[Whaeanui]

Following on from this thread: Part 1 https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/the_royal_family/4786923-the-press-the-royals-a-discussion?page=1

As we know, the press often manufacture stories to create divisions between the women in the family, more often than the men. They have also hacked private communications, with cases ongoing. The public seem to feed off this and none of the family get treated very well except the monarch-although not always.

For discussion: do we think it is possible for the royal family to stay relevant and in the publics mind without their unhealthy relationship with the media, and how can they achieve that? How will previous and current legal proceedings alter the relationship?
Please do not intentionally derail this thread by discussing your personal dislike of particular family members or if they deserve it. I would really like to continue this discussion on how the royal family and the press interact, as above.

@Puzzledandpissedoff I don't think he got a job there lol!

At that point you could just access voicemails with standard PIN codes.

Yes he will get protection when and if it is deemed appropriate not because he decides he wants it.

I used to work in police admin, was responsible for staffing rotas and I don't think people have any idea of what is involved. You need 5 officers to provide 24/7 cover, and as you stated before the sort of officers we are talking about are very experienced and highly trained. We don't have enough police officers as it is can we really afford to train and employ 5 officers of that standard so that Harry can always call on one of them? Of course one wouldn't be enough so we might need 10 or 15 for him. With oncosts you are looking at around £1m to £2m plus a year for that sort of cover so Harry can occasionally visit, it isn't a question of him saying I'll pay for cover for 3 days here and 7 days there, you can't employ protection officers on that basis. What are the police supposed to do if there is credible intelligence that another person, royal or not, is at high risk and they can't supply Harry and that person under threat?

You can't easily fill these roles.

I think it is interesting that when this started his grandmother was alive and he was just one of her grandchildren, how many of the others had this level of protection? He's in a slightly different position now as his cousins aren't the children of the king but at that time they were all the GC of The Queen.

ITV correspondent, linked earlier:
*Day 6 of Prince Harry v MGN

We’re hearing from Derek Haslam a former undercover police informer who infiltrated Jonathan Rees’s firm Southern Investigations to gather intelligence about the murder of Daniel Morgan.*

*He says he also found connections between Southern Investigations and the newspapers, which involved the harvesting and supply of confidential information which had been obtained unlawfully, via phone tapping, computer and phone hacking, bribing police officers
He says Private Investigator Jonathan Rees boasted that he could even get hold of the Queen’s medical records.

And he bragged about working for the Daily Mirror and Sunday Mirror.
Derek Haslam claims PI Jonathan Rees often spoke about work he’d done for MGN.

For example, selling information to the Mirror for a story about Prince Michael of Kent being in debt to the bank.

“He was always very proud about this kind of thing and loved to boast about it.”*

For reference, Byline has some more info here about Derek Haslam
https://bylinetimes.com/2023/03/31/press-and-police-corruption-mail-hearing-reveals-more-connections-between-murders-of-daniel-morgan-and-stephen-lawrence/

I don’t think anyone can reasonably compare Harry with a former PM.

Surely the reason they get it for life is because they are privy to confidential information/state secrets etc?

Ots nothing to do with their public profile et. I wouldn’t have thought?

He was cross examined already.....

I think his claim that he should be in the "always protected" category was deemed inarguable at the permission stage (he was essentially trying to argue that this category should replicate the category of people that have to ask the monarch's permission to get married). So he's left with arguing that he should have been allowed to make representations to RAVEC, he should have been told about the content of the RAVEC policy, and that the decision to remove his security on the same basis it was previously granted was unreasonable.

It’s a little more complicated than that in Harry’s case. He’s still got the same risk as before

The only relevant assessment of the risk that Harry faces is RAVEC's, and they have assessed that he does not. They have been given the authority to make that decision. The courts have been very clear (notably in the Shamina Begum case) that they will not replace a decision made by the correct authority with their own decision. The only circumstance in which a court will intervene is if RAVEC have acted in a way that no reasonable decision-maker could have acted. It's a very high threshold to meet.

The Leveson enquiry went into a great deal of detail about how the police investigations had proved who was involved in phone hacking. A lot of the evidence was around who had called the mobile phone number that was being hacked (or the generic number that gave you access to the voicemail system that you then used to dial into the mailbox that was being hacked).

In the case of the NOTW prosecutions, for example, they were able to track the number of times that the “private investigator” had dialled into the Royal Household phones they were hacking into, and how many times it came from a phone registered to his home address, or his mobile, or a phone located at the offices of NOTW etc.

If the police had wanted to demonstrate that staff at the Mirror were using their office phones to attempt hacking in the early 2000s, they would have been able to.

Court now hearing from former Mirror journalist Graham Johnson who was convicted of phone hacking at the paper

*He claims in October 2001 he was instructed by the Deputy Editor, Mark Thomas, with the knowledge of the Editor, Tina Weaver, to intercept the voicemails of soap star Denise Welch

The defence point out that in the past he’d fabricated stories and even described himself as a “professional liar”.

But under cross-examination Graham Johnson insists he is no longer a liar and wouldn’t do that “in the witness box under oath at the High Court”
In his witness statement Graham Johnson says he’s the only journalist who was involved in phone hacking to have ever “come forward voluntarily and make admissions. It is because I believe the full truth should come out.”
He says he’s told the truth and “the truth doesn’t change”

But under cross-examination Graham Johnson insists he is no longer a liar and wouldn’t do that “in the witness box under oath at the High Court”

As the judge inwardly rolls his eyes and thinks “Well, I’ve heard that before…” 😂

*Hipwell, who worked on the Daily Mirror's City Slickers column for two years until his dismissal, told the inquiry that on the paper's business desk he sat within a few feet of the showbiz team on the 22nd floor of Canary Wharf.
In his witness statement, he wrote that he was "able to see at close hand how [the showbiz desk] operated".
"I witnessed journalists carrying out repeated privacy infringements, using what has now become a well-known technique to hack in to the voicemail systems of celebrities, their friends, publicists, and public relations executives," Hipwell said in his statement. "The openness and frequency of their hacking activities gave me the impression that hacking was considered a bog-standard journalistic tool for gathering information."
He added that on occasion he heard members of the showbiz team "discussing what they had heard on voicemails openly across their desks". "One of the reporters showed me the technique, giving me a demonstration of how to hack into voicemails."
https://amp.theguardian.com/media/2011/dec/21/leveson-inquiry-mirror-journalist

Why didn't all these people report law breaking? It seems hard to understand that they all want to come forward years after the event. I'd be too ashamed to admit I knew what was going on and kept my mouth shut.

“James Hipwell, who was fired over the City Sickers scandal…”

Somehow it takes the Guardian several paragraphs to reveal that James Hipwell wasn’t just fired… he was convicted and jailed for the offence of market manipulation when he wrote the City Slickers column at the Mirror! The Guardian definitely knew about that, as they covered it when it happened.

At the times, they described him as a corrupt hack exploiting the gullible public. Times change, I guess….

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2005/dec/12/mirror.mondaymediasection

Cynical me would suggest there was nothing in it personally for them at the time. There were more than 300 witnesses at the Leveson Enquiry for example, so plenty of safety in numbers for them, even by that stage nearly 30 year old Omid Scobie whom I think was by them working for Heat magazine, not a tabloid. Hipwell could well have still been in jail, I guess (but you can be a witness in jail).

But you’d have to ask them yourselves.

This from the Telegraph summarises Harry's current litigation load:

On Tuesday, the Duke’s lawyers were back in the High Court, this time arguing it was wrong for the Home Office to deny him the right to pay privately for his Metropolitan Police bodyguards when he is back in the UK.

Having already launched a claim challenging the decision to no longer give him the “same degree” of personal protective security that he had when he was a fully-fledged member of the monarchy, Harry, 38, is now trying to bring a second lawsuit against the Home Office for denying him the right to reimburse the taxpayer.

The case is one of five the father of two is pursuing through the civil court in London.
While his lawyers were arguing the toss with the Home Office in one courtroom, Harry’s barrister David Sherborne was appearing in another - continuing to lead his case against Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN), publishers of the Daily and Sunday Mirror and Sunday People, for unlawful information gathering, including phone hacking.
...

Meanwhile, the Duke is also suing News Group Newspapers (NGN), publishers of The Sun and The Sun on Sunday - which replaced the defunct News of the World - for unlawful information gathering.
Last month, he submitted a 31-page witness statement containing a series of incendiary claims - including the suggestion that a “secret agreement” was struck between the Royal Household and Rupert Murdoch’s empire over phone hacking in order to “smooth the way” for Camilla to become Queen Consort.....

The Duke is also suing Associated Newspapers Ltd (ANL), publishers of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, on two fronts - for illegal information gathering and for publishing what he claims was a libellous story about his case against the Home Office in February 2022 under the headline: “Exclusive: How Prince Harry tried to keep his legal fight with the government over police bodyguards a secret... then - just minutes after the story broke - his PR machine tried to put a positive spin on the dispute.”

All five cases are ongoing and it is not known when they will conclude or what the outcomes will be.

No one lies on oath! 😉

@ancientgran I did read somewhere that Harry has a US annual bill of around £1 million for his private security. I think his perceived need to have this security fuelled his anger at his family and the Uk government, when it was declined. As he lives in America, the American taxpayers would be funding this under the 'protected persons' (not sure of the name) scheme. It's not refunded by our government but is on a reciprocal basis as I'm sure you know.

@Mumsnut Flipping heck! No wonder no one can keep up with it all.

Thank you @Mumsnut

I suppose if you're a tabloid journalist, and spend your days encouraging paparazzi to stalk women, threatening to out gay MPS, and publishing exclusives about the PM's sick child, then phone hacking isn't wildly out of kilt with your general moral compass. From that perspective, legality becomes a technicality.

But James Hipwell has been whistle-blowing on MGN since at least 2011. He gave a very long witness statement in the Gulati case in 2015. None of the stuff that the court is going over at the moment is new information. MGN have previously admitted that they were involved in widespread hacking.

While in the UK he'll get the protection he is deemed to need based on intelligence. He will know if there is a serious threat as the protection officers will be there. I don't understand why he would need more than that or think he can have it if he clicks his fingers.

I think the funding is interesting, how would it be calculated? On an hourly basis or on what it would cost to train and pay enough officers so that they would be available at any time? I think there would be objections to the 2nd but the reality is that is what it would actually cost.

These witnesses ... I'm not sure I'd buy a bridge from any of them ...