King Charles IIIFrom king’s ski-slope outburst to Harry’s recent court bombshell, royals have long had love-hate relationship with UK media
King Charles will undoubtedly be delighted by the acres of excited headlines that have dominated much of the media before his coronation.
Given their complicated history, there were times he and the queen consort may have questioned whether they could really receive such unfettered support from the same UK tabloid newspapers that were once their fiercest critics.
However, few could have imagined over the years of careful campaigning that will finally lead to Queen Camilla being anointed and crowned next to the king on Saturday, that one fly in the ointment would be the king’s own son.
Once more the Duke of Sussex’s arrows of accusation have pierced his father and brother at this most sensitive of times.
Prince Harry’s sensational courtroom claim last week that his own father, the king, personally demanded he stop his legal cases against British newspapers in 2019 to keep the media on side and smooth the way “for my stepmother (and father) to be accepted by the British public as queen consort (and king respectively)” would not have been welcome.
He also alleged that his brother, the Prince of Wales, has received a “huge sum of money” in an undisclosed private phone-hacking settlement from Rupert Murdoch’s media business “in return for him going ‘quietly’ so to speak”.
And there existed, Harry further claimed, a “secret agreement” between the royals and Murdoch executives that they would wait until the conclusion of litigation to have their claims dealt with to avoid the witness box – a claim News Group Newspapers, publishers of the Sun, has denied.
The claims were made during a hearing in Harry’s legal action against NGN for damages in which he alleges that the Sun newspaper illegally hacked his voicemails and hired private investigators to blag private information about his relationships during the 2000s. Murdoch’s company has always insisted that phone hacking only took place at the News of the World, the now defunct Sunday tabloid that was shut down in 2011 at the height of the scandal.
The headlines Harry’s claims generated last week do not augur well for any family reconciliation during his planned flying visit to attend his father’s coronation. They have also shone an unwelcome spotlight on Charles’s long, complicated and often fraught relationship with the media, but one he allegedly needed to keep on track to ensure Camilla would be at his side as queen on 6 May.
They also pose another potential headache for the king. Should Harry succeed in his legal actions – and there are many obstacles in his path – some may hail him as a lone royal crusader taking on the mighty tabloids. Certainly that appears to be how Harry sees himself. So what would it say of his father, whom his younger son claims tried his best to prevent him from taking on such a cause?
Charles has walked the tightrope with the tabloids for most of his adult life. His loathing of the press was unambiguous when, in 2005 on the ski slopes of Klosters, he posed for the cameras with his two sons, unaware a microphone was picking up every word. “Bloody people,” he smiled through gritted teeth. Then, referencing the BBC royal correspondent Nicholas Witchell, part of the press pack: “I can’t bear that man anyway. He’s so awful, he really is. I hate these people.”
It was an unintentionally public outburst for the normally controlled Charles. “At times we have seen the fractious Charles, specifically at Klosters, ” said Joe Little, the managing editor of Majesty Magazine.
“Like much of the rest of the family, and for generations, he will have a love-hate relationship with the media, though I imagine there is not much love involved. But clearly there is an acceptance that the media is a necessary evil to promote, ideally, just the public work of the royal family.”
Little added: “Of course, it doesn’t work that way. It’s the private lives of individual members of the family that are of greater interest to the majority of newspapers. And it was always thus. So, there is no doubt there is irritation with the media, but that they have to be tolerated.”
It is the royal PR adviser’s lot to persuade their masters and mistresses of the benefits of good press relations. To this end, Charles has invited the media to tour his gardens at Highgrove, or attend black-tie dinners at Dumfries House. He chats to them on his private plane. Even William and Harry have invited select journalists to drinks receptions, although how much the two princes enjoyed these occasions is debatable.
And Charles undoubtedly sought to woo newspapers in his campaign to wed Camilla, most notably through his one-time deputy private secretary, Mark Bolland.
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Little said: “We know that Bolland was very much responsible for getting the first degree of acceptance for Camilla Parker Bowles as she then was, and for smoothing the initial path to where she is now. Clearly favours have been called on during the course of that relationship being built up. That’s just how these things operate.”
But Charles has also not been averse to legal action himself if be believes a line to have been crossed. Nor have other royals. Harry is far from the first.
The public did not know about William’s alleged settlement. Kensington Palace refuses to comment on whether there was indeed a settlement, which one unconfirmed report put at £1m. And if there was such a payment, it is also not known if William, as many royals have done in the past, donated it to charity.
But it is known that Queen Elizabeth II twice sued the Sun, in 1988 over a stolen photographs of Sarah, Duchess of York with Princess Beatrice, and in 1993 when the same paper paid a reported £200,000 to a charity in a settlement after publishing a leaked text of her Christmas message. In 2003, she also obtained an injunction to prevent the Daily Mirror from publishing further reports after its reporter Ryan Parry spent time as a servant at Buckingham Palace.
In 2005, Charles obtained an injunction to prevent the Mail on Sunday from publishing further extracts from his travel journal in which, the paper alleged, he described Chinese diplomats at the 1997 handover of Hong Kong as “appalling old waxworks”. He also obtained an injunction in 1995 to prevent a former housekeeper publishing her memoirs in the UK.
Diana, Princess of Wales sued the Mirror group over photographs of her exercising at a gym, with the paper apologising and reportedly paying her £1m legal costs and a further £200,000 to charity.
In 2012, the then Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were awarded more than €100,000 damages by a Paris court after a French magazine published topless photographs of Kate on holiday.
In his court claims last week, Harry points to the time when his father and then girlfriend faced the excruciating embarrassment of a highly intimate private telephone conversation being published. Charles undoubtedly suffered badly at the hands of the press during the “war of the Waleses” as the PR battle between him and Diana was dubbed, said Little. So, there is some argument for him to say to his son: “Look what I have been subjected to, and I have coped with it.”
Little added: “There has been so much controversy over the past few years over the Duke and Duchess of Sussex that the king would be keen to calm the situation. To defuse matters as much as he possibly can. You can see why he wouldn’t want to ignite the situation any further.”
A judgment on whether Harry’s case can proceed is expected in July. If he is successful, the full trial would take place in January 2024.
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