Sequel to Prince Harry’s feud with British tabloids begins in high-stakes trial - News
LONDON (AP) — The sequel to Prince Harry vs. the British tabloids begins Tuesday in a high-stakes trial pitting him against Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers that could cost him millions even if he wins.
LONDON (AP) — The sequel to Prince Harry vs. the British tabloids begins Tuesday in a high-stakes trial pitting him…
LONDON (AP) — The sequel to Prince Harry vs. the British tabloids begins Tuesday in a high-stakes trial pitting him against Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers that could cost him millions even if he wins.
Harry, 40, the younger son of King Charles III, and one other claimant remain alone among hundreds who have settled lawsuits against News Group Newspapers, the publisher of The Sun and the now-defunct News of the World, over a llegations their phones were hacked and investigators unlawfully snooped on their lives.
It will be the first case of its kind to go to trial against the publisher since a widespread phone hacking scandal forced Murdoch to close News of the World in 2011. News Group has settled more than 1,300 other claims.
For the Duke of Sussex, it will be the second trial in London’s High Court in his long-running feud with the press that he blames for the death of his mother, Princess Diana, who was killed in a car crash while being chased by paparazzi. He also blames them for persistent attacks on his wife, actor Meghan Markle, that led them to leave the royal life and flee to the U.S. in 2020.
Harry has said his mission to hold the media accountable has led to a rift with his family but it’s one he feels compelled to carry out to expose wrongdoing.
He won a similar case against the publisher of the Daily Mirror in 2023 and he has another case pending against the Daily Mail’s publisher.
Here’s a look at the case:
Allegations aimed at editors and executivesHarry claims News Group journalists and private investigators they hired violated his privacy by using unlawful tactics to dig up dirt on him and his family between 1996 and 2011.
His fellow claimant, Tom Watson, a former deputy leader of the Labour Party, said his voicemails were intercepted during a period when he was investigating the hacking scandal.
Their lawyer said the newspapers had a widespread practice of using deception to obtain medical, phone and flight records, bugged homes and placed listening devices in cars.
They allege that executives concealed the skullduggery through means that included destroying documents.
“This allegation is wrong, unsustainable, and is strongly denied,” News Group said in a statement.
Former executives accused of playing a role include Will Lewis, now CEO of the Washington Post, and Rebekah Brooks, CEO of News UK, a division of News Corp. They have denied wrongdoing.
Brooks was acquitted of phone hacking conspiracy charges in a criminal trial in 2014, though her former colleague, Andy Coulson, who was later spokesman for Prime Minister David Cameron, was jailed.
News Group strongly denies the allegations and it said Harry failed to bring his lawsuit within the required six-year limit.
News Group apologized to News of the World phone hacking victims in 2011. The Sun has never accepted liability.
Strong incentive to settleActor Hugh Grant had been one of Harry’s remaining co-claimants, but said he was forced to accept “an enormous sum of money” to settle because he could have faced a legal bill of 10 million pounds ($12.3 million) even if he won at trial.
Under English civil law, a claimant who wins a court judgment that is lower than what they were offered to settle, has to pay the legal bills for both sides. The law is intended to discourage lengthy trials.
Despite the grave financial risk, Harry told The New York Times Dealbook Summit in December that he was not going to fold.
“They’ve settled because they’ve had to settle,” he said of other claimants. “One of the main reasons for seeing this through is accountability, because I’m the last person that can actually achieve that.”
Litigation, a source of family frictionThe trial, which is expected to last 10 weeks, will put Harry back in the witness box for several days in February.
In 2023, Harry became the first senior member of the royal family to testify in court since the late 19th century, when Queen Victoria’s eldest son, Prince Albert Edward, testified twice.
That has put Harry at odds with a family famous for a “never complain, never explain” attitude.
Harry revealed in court papers that his father opposed his litigation. He also said his older brother William, Prince of Wales and heir to the throne, had received a “huge sum” to settle a complaint against News Group.
Harry said his tabloid war was central to his fallout with his family.
“The mission continues, but it has, yes, it’s caused, as you say, part of a rift,” Harry said in the documentary “Tabloids On Trial.”
Harry said he wished his family had joined him in making a stand against media offenses.
“But, you know, I’m doing this for my reasons,” he said.
Case gets to trial despite setbacksNews Group has failed to kill the case over the past two years, but Harry has experienced some setbacks in a series of sometimes bruising hearings.
The publisher succeeded in getting Harry’s phone hacking claims thrown out because the judge said he should have been aware of the widely publicized scandal and could have brought his lawsuit sooner.
The judge also rejected Harry’s effort to broaden the case to include claims of eavesdropping on his mother, unearthing private information on his wife and implicating Murdoch.
Harry alleged Murdoch, who was chief executive of the company that controlled NGN, was part of the effort to conceal evidence of hacking or had “turned a blind eye” to it. The judge said those allegations would add nothing material to claims that include other “trusted lieutenants,” such as Brooks and Murdoch’s younger son, James Murdoch.
The judge also tossed out Harry’s bid to include assertions that Buckingham Palace had a secret deal with News Group executives that called for a settlement and an apology to be worked out after other phone hacking litigation was resolved.
Judge Timothy Fancourt said Harry failed to produce witnesses or documents that could show his grandmother, the late Queen Elizabeth II, had approved of the deal to protect the royal family from embarrassing litigation.
The publisher denied there was any secret agreement.
Copyright © 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.
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The X Games will experiment judging halfpipe runs this week in Aspen using artificial intelligence, the cutting-edge technology that could someday play a role in the way subjectively judged sports are scored.
Long a trendsetter in action sports, the X Games and its new CEO, freestyle skiing great Jeremy Bloom, teamed with Google founder Sergey Brin to build the technology.
Using Google Cloud tools including Vertex AI, Bloom thinks this experiment has potential to change the game on halfpipes, then maybe on slopestyle courses, skating rinks and anywhere a judge is used to score a contest.
“Part of subjective sports, we see it all over the place, is that even at their best, humans can get it wrong,” said Bloom, who was a freestyle skier at two Olympics while also playing college football at Colorado. “Sometimes getting it wrong has huge implications. What if we could give judges superpowers and they could see things they couldn't see with the human eye, and this technology could help inform them?”
The specter of a judging mistake lingers over every high-stakes contest, and even with its more laid-back vibe, snowboarding, which is now a fixture in the Olympic program, is no exception.
At the last Winter Games in Beijing, the sport narrowly avoided a potential scandal in the men's halfpipe final. Japan's Ayumu Hirano landed the most difficult trick in the sport — a triple cork — as part of a strong, top-to-bottom run, but was ranked behind another rider who didn't do the trick after two rounds.
Snowboarding experts were aghast on social media. Had Hirano not pulled off the trick again on his third round, his score from Round 2 wouldn't have been enough for the gold medal he eventually won.
In another episode, Canadian slopestyler Max Parrot acknowledged not grabbing his board on a run that earned him a gold medal, a key element that judges missed but that could be picked up on close review of the video.
The AI at the X Games this week won't have any impact on the official scoring, but will be a gauge of what's possible in the future. Bloom said thousands of hours of halfpipe footage, along with the judging criteria, have been loaded into a system that will be shown on the TV telecast and be made available to the live judges.
The AI will be programmed to watch haflpipe practice and predict the top three finishers. Then its powers will be used to judge and commentate on three different riders as they go down the halfpipe.
“It's early days, but the technology sort of blows your mind,” Bloom said. “It's the power of what it can do when you give it clear direction. It's pretty amazing what this thing can do.”
In snowboarding, judges look at elements like the height of the jumps, the difficulty of the tricks and how well they're executed. They ultimately deliver scores on a 100-point scale based on how runs stack up against each other.
It's a nuance unlike figure skating or gymnastics, where individual tricks have specific point values. Bloom says all that is being taken into account as they work through the experiment.
He does not envision a future with no human judges.
“I don't think this replaces the judges, Bloom said, but I think it gives them power to ensure objectivity.”
___
AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/winter-olympicsAP
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