Prince Harry’s bid to sue The Sun over phone hacking thrown out by High Court judge

[MamoruHisaishi]

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/prince-harry-the-sub-phone-hacking-high-court-judge-b1097090.html

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However my wobble with it is the law should be paramount. Free speech should not be compromised. Newspapers should not be gagged, so where do you find the sweet spot where people's privacy is respected and malicious stories are not printed, but the press is free to expose wrongdoing (as it undoubtedly does on occasion).

I feel the same.

The idea of a free press is that the 4th estate monitor our governments - ‘keep the bastards honest’ as the saying used to be.

It now seems to be a more symbiotic relationship between govt and media than was ever intended. Many many media companies are global now, run by oligarchs who are making unimaginable sums of money. It seems they have power to control and manipulate our governments for their own interests, and consequently effects us. The ‘free press’, - I’m talking big, global media (not independent media) in the form it has taken, is now costing us dearly. Think years of climate change denial, for one.

Perhaps revisiting media ownership laws would help. Stricter restrictions on how much media a person can own - perhaps. But I don’t like the chances - government members know that they will most likely become unelectable if they try to hold media owners to account. And some (many?) government members often also have private business interests…grift seems to be becoming ‘business as usual.’

I love the idea of a free press, in the form it was supposedly intended - as a fourth estate.

Back in the 1970s, a new, up-and-coming newspaperman pointed out the problem.

“We have more responsibility than power I think,” he said. “The newspaper can create great controversies… throw light on injustices – just as it can do the opposite. It can hide things, and be a great power for evil.”…Rupert Murdoch.

(Above Quote taken from the Byline Times)

”It can hide things and be a great power for evil.”

BTW, didn’t Boris Johnson toddle off to work for the Daily Mail.

A free press is literally what it says on the tin - they can publish what they like. The benefits are the wealthy and powerful being held to account. The negatives are sometimes they will overstep the line and get it wrong.

Governments and the wealthy will use their resources to try and control their image: they will sue on the most minor points of law (like copyright infringement!), they will brief the press, they will set up events likely to show them in a good light, they might even have a favoured reporter, they might try to skip the press and publish their version of events directly to the public, but… because we have a free press, the press don’t just talk to them.

By symbiotic - you mean, not really, more parasitic since the media always kill the host. I don’t even mean that in a bad way! That’s the media doing its job.

They may have an editorial stance but a) often it will surprise you, and b) that doesn’t stop news being reported. It was The Mail that relentlessly campaigned for justice for Stephen Lawrence (they called the killers “murderers” on the front page and challenged them to sue) and was ultimately successful, it was The Telegraph that exposed the expenses scandal that brought down quite a few MPs, etc.

The reason you know that Kate looked nice at Wimbledon is because it was published in the papers. The reason you know Kate’s brother-in-law is a bit dodgy (and so is her sister’s father-in-law), her brother keeps failing businesses, her parents’ company had to take out a covid loan and then collapsed once it was sold, her tour to the Bahamas didn’t go well, she had fallen out with Meghan… the only reason you know all that is because it was printed by the same papers.

Almost every single negative story that you know about the rich and powerful, you know because it was printed by the free press. Every law that you can pass to gag the press about an ex-royal will be used to gag the press about a government minister.

And writing a column is not really journalism, it’s offering a view. Boris Johnson was a columnist long before he was a politician. Columnists are not breaking stories about the Sussexes, don’t worry.

(Using the term “print” quite loosely by the way - obviously e.g. the BBC doesn’t print anything, but you know what I mean!)

I do know what you mean by ‘print.’ :)

So you see no problem in a lot of media being owned by rich powerful men (mostly men) who often own far reaching global media interests and also have other big business interests? You don’t think having mostly free range ownership by big and powerful media owners allows for abuses of power - unchecked?

I wonder who is acting as a check on their power now?

Many of the journalism I read that expose the abuses by the rich and powerful do come from smaller independent media sources.

EG there is no reason (one would think) why man made climate change has been denounced so regularly in the past by the very powerful far reaching mainstream media. Approx 98% of climate scientists say the climate crisis is mostly a man made problem. And have done so for quite some time. But they (media) dug up the 2% (there are unconscionable people in all professions) who said not so - it’s naturally occurring. So many large media sources have religiously pooh poohed the idea of man made warming and have, at best, ‘printed’ that global warming is mostly natural. Murdoch, I’ve read, has been a big climate denier. He has said similar to a ‘small rise, but that’s okay, blah blah alarmist extremes’( my words but that’s the gist). ’ He is not credible in this. He runs a news empire known for telling lies - he just paid a huge settlement because his company were unable to hide the lies they supported - that Trump had won the last election. His media is most commonly thought to be a factor in the build up that culminated in Jan 6.

I think, in regard to climate, this is just starting to change because there are now big weather events happening around us - bigger and more frequently than ever. There comes a point where what large media owners are selling is no longer a viable belief. It’s the ‘We just don’t believe them’ tipping point.’ But the damage done by that point may well be irreversible.

The media will kill the host, to use your words, but they are only moved to kill the host when the host no longer suits their purposes. By then it can be too little, too late. Consequences - devastating.

As I said up post, who checks and balances the media oligarchs?

We need a free press. What we don’t need is a free self serving press.

Which large media orgs deny climate change?

Off the top of my head, Daily Mail for one, has denied and minimised it for years.

But Murdoch’s media I know best. It’s only very recently it’s stopped being so strident in its denial and have started pretending they always believed in it.

Washington Post has a history of denial.

Thats 3 big media sources in 3 different countries (murdoch is across all three) - they are all also now global, courtesy of the world wide web.

But you can google all the rest. It’s really quite depressing.

Good posts. And whilst we might laud the DM for pushing ahead on Stephen Lawrence's killers, let us not forget that Baronness Lawrence is suing the DM (part of the case Harry is involved in) for wrongdoing and unlawful information gathering.

Ah I thought you meant UK papers. In the UK in 2023 if you want climate change denial you need the smaller, independent, cranky publications.

(The Daily Mail’s editorial position isn’t denial of climate change although they do criticise XR and JSO a lot, because that’s what their readers want to read. Is that what you mean? Example from Deputy Science Editor earlier this week: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12337753/Experts-warn-climate-change-lead-extreme-heatwaves-icy-winters-scientists-say-hellish-temperatures-fuelling-wildfires-southern-Europe-impossible-without-human-influence.html)

Thanks @Roussette . When I read what good the Daily Mail had done on here in regards to Stephen Lawrence’s murder, I thought, hang on, isn’t his mother suing them?

We have so much absolute shite coming out in our country concerning recent past dealings of the media-government-big business triangle of overlapping interests, that I tend to forget who are suing in the 3 cases we talk about on here, NGN, MGN and, I think the third is AP (or maybe AN).

AN (one against Mail On Sunday for defamation, one general one for phone hacking, plus Meghan’s successful case against MOS for copyright infringement).

They also settled cases against Splash News & Pictures and a similar US company for aerial photos.

Completely agree, it’s not black and white (interestingly in a weird twist of history, the Mail decided to take up the campaign for justice when Paul Dacre realised he knew Stephen Lawrence’s father from work he’d done on his house). Was just making the point that the same tabloids have exposed some major stories and also done good - probably should have picked another example! They… are responsible for the carrier bag tax?!

That’s a pretty recent example of the DM publishing an article on man made global warming - dated July 23 this year.

As I said earlier, many big media companies are starting to pretend they were always on the side of climate change. I didn’t read the article because I’ve read my fill lately on climate crisis - watching the extreme fires in Europe and having lived through the 2019-2020 fires in my country, and the consequent floods (when land is destabilised through fire it floods more easily, very easily, after/during unprecedented rain fall) - I’m dreading this summer because El Niño is back.

I just wanted to mention that the denial strategy in the past has often involved presenting climate change as having 2 sides - the yes side and the no side. It’s ‘bothsiderism’ - both sides of an argument are presented as being ‘balanced,’ but upon closer examination one side actually has little, or no credible sources to support it.

Bothsiderism is something a lot of media does now I’ve noticed. (I’ve even seen public television employ it at times). They do it with many topics now.

i do tend to focus on Murdoch - his media have impacted our country in many ways. Some of which are just becoming known to us.

But he is also a powerful owner of media in the UK, the US and my country. He’s got The Sun and The Times (I think it’s called) in the UK. He also comes to you courtesy of News.com, sky.com and other smaller subsidiary news outlets, I believe. He is currently making a large amount of money out of ‘news’ on you tube.

But all is good - as long as we ‘don’t look up.’

Thank you.

Oh fuck. I accidentally linked to sky - don’t go there.

Agree it’s fair to say a lot of influential media took the “scenic route” to climate-change-is-man-made-and-bad acceptance.

The existence of these mega-conglomerates is not a good thing (pre-social media & online media it made it virtually impossible for new competitors to take off) but the impact is often over-stated. Murdoch wants to sell papers and advertisements. If every News Corp organisation ran Murdoch’s personal views on every issue it would have a readership of 1. They all have boards, editorial independence and they also are beholden to their readers/viewers.

A meeting of the minds :)

However, it’s difficult to prove, but still not difficult to believe, that bosses like Murdoch employ editors who know exactly what tone/stance he wants. They, in turn, direct who writes what. (I’ve read books in the past where journalists talk about having experienced this very thing).

I agree that Murdoch is not going to have all his opinions on things published and nothing else. You are definitely right - he would only have a very small readership. There is room for other opinions, and they often turn up in surprising news places. Eg, You’ll suddenly get a very ‘left’ take in a usually conservative newspaper, which achieves two things - it keeps readers interested and sometimes outraged - outrage sells , many people love to be a bit outraged. Also, printing a liberal opinion in a conservative space also gives (maybe only ‘lends’ - I’m not sure) a legitimacy to a newspaper. ie it can sell itself as not totally one sided AND people who look to certain conservative news sources because they reflect their opinions back at them (they feed their world view), those people can then defend a very conservative right wing news source by being able to point out that it’s a quite reasonable source because it addresses something liberally on occasion.

I think this happens to an extent in very left leaning news sources too. Occasionally they will present a rather conservative viewpoint for the same reasons.

It’s complex and all of it is certainly bigger than I can grasp.

Back to Harry and Meghan - Murdoch & also Daily Mail et al are making a ton of money out of Meghan hate, with a very occasional positive article on her to give their news media some legitimacy, and sometimes outrage their readers. Only to publish, some half hour later, another Meghan/Harry bashing article which calms the outraged reader and reassures the reader they are right to see/feel the way they do etc and etc.

(Newspapers & news sources are interchangeable phrases here. I never know what to call them since actual newsPAPERS are dying out. Perhaps Traditional Media is a useful phrase).

@PrincessTigger

You say the impact of mega conglomerate is ‘not a good thing but it’s often overstated ‘
Your statement looks a bit like the ‘bothsiderism ‘ described by another poster.
How is it overstated ? How have you measured the degree of overstatement?

And as this the ‘royals’ board - how does Willy’s , Camilla’s , Charles ‘ PR machine fit into this picture ?
Btw, I sometimes look at the comments on the DM and more and more people are seeing the strings being pulled .

https://bylinetimes.com/2023/07/28/mailonline-and-the-sun-hid-serious-dan-wootton-claims-while-attacking-huw-edwards-and-the-bbc/

@Ivyusername
” It was Andrew, but now the couple have superseded him”

Agreed.
Now why do you think that is ?

There are some people who will see an article in print that they don’t like, and will say “but Rupert Murdoch”. And you say “Rupert Murdoch what?” And they’re confused because they thought invoking his name was a full argument.

Thousands of journalists, photographers, editors, around the world are not simply doing the bidding of Rupert Murdoch, I promise you. He probably doesn’t have much of an opinion on Meghan and Harry at all other than gratitude they are making him a lot of money for him right now.

Not only that but she believes they prolonged getting justice for her son. the idea anyone is still giving credit to the Daily Mail for this is just... well its crazy to me.

I do not believe for one second the Daily Mail, its editors or owners, give a shit about justice.

As for climate denial, I've seen very little either in print or televised media.

the pp meant historically. It's taken a loooong time for MSM to actually report the truth and facts on climate change.