Landmark Ruling: Prince Harry Takes Down Tabloid Over Illegal Activity

Prince Harry’s victory against Mirror Group Newspapers was hailed as a landmark ruling in the long-running saga of British tabloid press illegality, according to a British judge.

Judge Timothy Fancourt’s ruling noted that the Mirror newspapers had commissioned private investigators to break the law for more than a decade into illegal phone hacking activities. The judgement is the latest episode in the tabloids’ battles for scoops at any cost involving unethical practices in the cause of their battling to break news stories faster and better than their competition.

One of the notorious in-phone hacking methods was autoconnection to voice messages after dialling up the phone number with default PIN numbers. The persons related to being targeted by the method are the royal family, politicians, athletes, celebrities, and normal citizens who have been introduced into the public eye.

The judgement revealed that phone hacking had occurred at Mirror newspapers between 1998 and 2011, following similar preceding cases of phone hacking that had rocked the headlines. Notably, the phone hacking scandal in 2007 of the News of the World was exposed after the crime of hacking into the phone of Milly Dowler, a murdered 13-year-old girl, revealed the invasion of privacy against Prince William and others, leading to the paper closing in 2011.

The fallout has included a government-led inquiry into media ethics, which helped to unveil cozy relations between political, media, and police elites. But the full truth only emerged with Fan Court’s judgement, which called its openness and accountability into question and concealed it for years.

The judgement resulted in hundreds of millions of claims and settlements over illicit activities in the Mirror Group. Prince Harry proved his resolve against tabloid exploitation with a 140,000-pound payout from the Mirror Group. His follow-up is to expose those involved in such illegal practices and look for justice for the unethical practices going on in the British media.