BBC News<\/a>, when questioned by White why he didn\u2019t complain about his treatment in the press \u2014 specifically the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday \u2014 earlier, Harry responded that he \u201cwasn\u2019t allowed to complain\u201d when he was a working member of the royal family, which he calls \u201cthe institution.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\tIn his witness statement, which Harry did not deliver in person but was published as his questioning began, the prince wrote that his \u201cuneasy relationship\u201d with the press began after the 1997 death of his mother, Princess Diana, when he was 12 years old.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cAs a member of the Institution the policy was to \u2018never complain, never explain.\u2019 There was no alternative; I was conditioned to accept it,\u201d Harry wrote, according to BBC News. \u201cFor the most part, I accepted the interest in my performing my public functions. However, in late 2016, when my relationship with Meghan, my now wife, became public, I started to become increasingly troubled by the approach of not taking action against the press in the wake of vicious persistent attacks on, harassment of and intrusive, sometimes racist articles concerning Meghan.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tHe added that many articles made him \u201cparanoid beyond belief\u201d and alleged that the publications sought to \u201cdrive me to drugs and drinking to sell more of their papers.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tHarry was questioned about specific Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday journalists while on the stand, alleging in his witness statement that some instances \u201cfelt like full-blown stalking\u201d and \u201cconstant surveillance.\u201d He claimed that Mail on Sunday foreign correspondent Barbara Jones would \u201cturn up in the most bizarre places\u201d and said it was \u201cvery suspicious\u201d that she would know where he was, particularly when he was in Africa.<\/p>\n
\n\tAccording to BBC News, the judge has interrupted Harry twice to remind him not to argue the case himself when responding to questioning.<\/p>\n
\n\tThis marks Harry\u2019s third time suing a major newspaper group, having previously taken legal action against The Sun owner News Group Newspapers, which settled before trial, as well as The Mirror Group, a case in which he was awareded \u00a3140,600 in damages. Harry\u2019s testimony during his 2023 trial against The Mirror Group made history, as he became the first royal in 130 years to testify in court.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe seven claimants are being represented by lawyer David Sherborne, who alleged in his opening statement that \u201cthere was clear, systematic and sustained use of unlawful information gathering at both the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday.\u201d White countered that the group is \u201cclutching at straws\u201d and that information in some of the stories had been published previously, with some of it coming from friends of the claimants who became sources for journalists.<\/p>\n
\n\tMore to come\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source variety.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prince Harry took the stand at London\u2019s High Court on Wednesday in his privacy case against the publisher of U.K. tabloid Daily Mail, claiming that he \u201cwasn\u2019t allowed to complain\u201d about the press when he was a working royal. The Duke of Sussex, who stepped away from royal duties in 2020 alongside wife Meghan Markle, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2243808,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[349239,22730],"class_list":["post-2243807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty","tag-daily-mail","tag-prince-harry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Couldnt-Complain-About-Press-as-Royal.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2243807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2243807"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2243807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2243809,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2243807\/revisions\/2243809"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2243808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2243807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2243807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2243807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}