Prince Harry's Testimony Is A Critical Turning Point Against Weaponized Media Of Hate

'They have made my wife’s life an absolute misery,' Prince Harry unexpectedly testified against Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL), owners of The Daily Mail.

Prince Harry unexpectedly testified on Wednesday, the third day of his years-long legal battle against Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL), owners of The Daily Mail. He had been expected to testify on Thursday in what is a long-fought battle that few could afford to sustain against the beast of ANL.

The Prince, along with Sir Elton John, his husband David Furnish, actresses Elizabeth Hurley and Sadie Frost, campaigner Baroness Doreen Lawrence, and former politician Sir Simon Hughes, allege unlawful information gathering, including hacking, bugging, and illegal surveillance, claims ANL denies.

“Prince Harry becomes visibly emotional and his voice breaks as he delivers his final sentence in the witness box in the case against the publisher of the Daily Mail. ‘They have made my wife’s life an absolute misery, my Lord’,” the Independent reported.

The duke claims 14 articles published by ANL between 2001 and 2013 were based on unlawful information gathering, and were written in a “highly intrusive and damaging way”.

One of the stories complained about by Harry concerned “confidential discussions” he had after a photo of a dying Diana, Princess of Wales was published in the Italian press – an article he described as “beyond cruel”.

In his written evidence, Harry described an article published in the Daily Mail in July 2006 as “really disgusting”, saying he was having private discussions with his brother, the now-Prince of Wales.

Over the holidays, Meghan Sussex sustained a weeks long press attack for being no contact with her toxic father as he reportedly suffered a health crisis. How is that related to this legal action?

‘Twas the season for dysfunctional families, but this time there is a connection to the crisis in US political media.

In May of 2024, Byline Investigates revealed that four current editors of UK national newspapers, including the editor of the London Times, were among the “dozens of current and former journalists from the Mail newspapers alleged to have employed private investigators to gather information by unlawful means, new court papers reveal.”

Tony Gallagher, Victoria Newton, Ben Taylor and David Dillon, the editors of the Times, the Sun, the Sunday Times and the Mail on Sunday, are named in damages claims brought against the owners of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday by Prince Harry, Baroness Doreen Lawrence, Elton John and others.

Though the claims were first brought in 2022, the names have only been made public now after the failure of sustained efforts by the Mail papers to prevent their disclosure. Some 70 individuals are identified.

And while this might not seem political, it absolutely is, because the structures of hierarchy that gang up to abuse and scapegoat the adult child who has gone no contact not only mirror the powerful people and institutions protected by our corrupt press, but actually in this case, involve them.

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No story better evinces the corruption and crisis than the press vilification of Meghan Sussex and Prince Harry. No, this isn’t a story about how they are perfect. There are no perfect people. This isn’t really about them, but they are the vehicle for the point.

This is a story about press corruption and the lies being sold to you to protect the most powerful, including press institutions with symbiotic relationships with the powerful.

In the U.S., think Maggie Haberman and Trump. CNN/Jake Tapper and Trump. Really, too many legacy media organizations and Trump. Even when these folks “criticize” Trump, they are using his corruption and criminality to attract eyeballs. They make money off of the circus, which is also the destruction of democracy — even as they claim to be the gatekeepers.

Adult Child Goes No Contact

Meghan Sussex was relentlessly attacked for going no contract with her father, Thomas Markle, who colluded with the press to cause his daughter great public embarrassment in the lead up to her 2018 wedding to Prince Harry.

Thomas Markle staged paparazzi photos showing him preparing for the event for money, which led to a public scandal, followed by a reported heart attack causing him pulling out of his daughter’s wedding just days before the ceremony. He colluded with tabloids, breaking promises of privacy.

This man even went so far as to publish excerpts of a private, five-page letter she wrote him in 2018, leading to a significant privacy lawsuit where Meghan Sussex successfully sued the Mail on Sunday (owned by Rothermere family’s Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT), the same group that owns the Daily Mail ) for publishing it.

Thomas Markle is white, by the way. His white children have played a predominant role in attacking their half-sister in the media, as well as using social media in such a terrorizing manner that some of their videos are demonetized.

There’s always a flying monkey when a person goes no-contact. In Meghan Sussex’s case, her torment is led by British tabloid press.

The Daily Mail, owned by the same group that published part of her letter to her father, even has a “journalist” named Caroline Graham, who has maintained a long-term relationship with him to the point of being embedded with Thomas Markle from country to country, including Mexico and the Philippines, where he currently resides.

She acted as the point person who informed the Markle children about their father’s health crises. Meghan’s father had the Daily Mail journalist tell his children that he was in the ICU and would lose his leg. This means he contacted the Daily Mail BEFORE he contacted his own children.

Feminegra reported on how the week’s worth of press abuse inferring that she was a negligent child — coinciding with the drop of her third With Love, Meghan Netflix special, reflected how Meghan not only lost her father but “she lost him to a media ecosystem that rewarded his cooperation”:

Meghan Sussex’s spokesman confirmed that she attempted to contact her father as soon as she learned of his surgery overseas. That single clarification dismantled a week of speculation built almost entirely on Daily Mail reporting, and it exposed how heavily the narrative depended on assumptions rather than fact. When the Mail later admitted that the email Meghan used had been inactive for years, the storyline shifted again. That detail strengthened her credibility and showed how selective tabloid framing had steered public opinion.

The betrayal is nearly unimaginable, except I can imagine it. I’ve seen the weakness in some people’s characters up close. And I’ve observed how the guilty are often the worst perpetrators of further abuse in their attempts to manage their own image and turn everyone involved against their victim. I’ve seen this in the political arena as well as in the movie industry. It’s the nature of some people.

The Daily Mail’s publisher, Associated Newspapers (ANL), has not appeared to disclose this lawsuit that Prince Harry just testified in, involving 30 years of claims of severe privacy breaches (phone hacking, illegal info gathering) in their nonstop vitriolic and negative coverage of Meghan, that once involved them becoming so apoplectic when she ate an avocado that they used it to associate her with fueling “human rights abuses, drought and murder.”

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