Piers Morgan hits back at Prince Harry over royal phone hacking allegations

British broadcaster and former tabloid editor Piers Morgan has denounced Prince Harry after his name came up in connection with the royal’s phone hacking lawsuit against the publishers of the DailyMirror.

Harry is suing Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN), publishers of the DailyMirror And Sunday people headlines, on alleged cases of illegal collection of information used to inform stories. These include phone hacking, wiretapping and blagging (acquiring information under a false pretense).

In a court case seen by Newsweek On Wednesday, Harry’s lawyers included testimony provided by author and journalist Omid Scobie, who then claimed he worked for the Sunday people he learned to hack phones and overheard conversations while he was at home DailyMirror on stories based on illegally sourced material.

When Scobie worked at the DailyMirrorMorgan was the tabloid’s editor.

Scobie is best known for writing the biography find freedom, linked to Harry and told the court he did not follow up on the request to hack phones because he considered the practice immoral.

Morgan, a vocal critic of both Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, who has denied ever hacking or ordering the hacking of phones, spoke out against the prince following Wednesday afternoon’s revelations.

The broadcaster, who now presents his own show on Rupert Murdoch-owned TalkTV, took to Twitter to post a screenshot from the recent episode of the adult animated comedy. South Park who ruthlessly usurped Harry and Meghan.

Posted without a caption, the image showed characters from the episode based on the royal couple holding signs that read “stop staring at us” and “we want our privacy”.

Morgan gave a more explicit reaction later in the day when questioned by a British media team outside his London home.

“All I’m going to say is I’m not going to take a course on Prince Harry’s invasion of privacy,” he told the ITV network. “Someone who has spent the past three years ruthlessly and cynically invading the privacy of the Royal Family for massive commercial gain and has told a bunch of lies about them. So I suggest he gets out of court and apologizes to his family for the shameful invasion of privacy he has committed.”

When asked if he would ever apologize to the Prince, Morgan replied: “Apologize? I think Prince Harry should apologize for his shameful invasion of the privacy of the Royal Family and others by the way.”

Morgan’s claims that Harry invaded his family’s privacy come from the Prince’s release of his revealing memoir Spare in January and its six-part Netflix docuseries in December 2022.

Harry faced backlash for openly criticizing his family members – most explicitly Prince William and Queen Camilla – and was questioned about the potential hypocrisy of revealing information about their private lives and conversations while actively pursuing privacy legal cases.

Sitting down with UK broadcaster Tom Bradby to promote his book, Harry was asked: “Some people will say you’ve railed about invasions of your privacy all your life. The prosecution will be here if you invade privacy of your relatives without permission, that will be the charge, right?”

To this, Harry suggested that this was a situation that made him feel the need to publish his version of the story which he felt had so far been narratively controlled by leaks from his family members themselves. same.

“It will be the accusation of people who don’t understand, or don’t, or don’t want to believe that my family has been solidly informing the press for over a decade,” he said. “So I’m sorry that the fact that I own my story and can tell my own story bothers some people.

“But I have to trust the truth, and I’ve done everything humanly possible in private to keep it from getting to that point, but now I can tell my story and like I said , Tom, none of this is intentionally harmful to anyone in my family. But I certainly feel… we never needed to be here.”

MGN has admitted partial wrongdoing and issued an apology in relation to some of the complaints filed against it on Wednesday by Harry and a group of other defendants, but it has denied the phone hacking allegation and has pledged to defend itself in court. court.

A spokesperson for the group said, according to the BBC: “Where historic wrongdoing has taken place, we have made admissions, take full responsibility and apologize unreservedly, but we will vigorously defend ourselves against allegations of wrongdoing. wrongdoing where our journalists have acted lawfully.

“MGN is now part of a very different company. We are committed to acting with integrity and our goal in this lawsuit is to get both the company and our journalists out of events that took place many years ago.

As part of the trial, which is expected to last up to six weeks, Harry himself will take the stand to give evidence.

James Crawford-Smith is Newsweek’s royal reporter based in London. You can find him on Twitter at @jrcrawfordsmith and read his stories on NewsweekThe Royals Facebook page.

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