Prince Harry received an overdue rebuke on Thursday, when Britain’s Independent Press Standards Organization ruled that a newspaper had not misled in its reporting on photos Harry had posted to Instagram.
It’s a necessary counter to Harry’s increasingly authoritarian streak on press freedom. The prince wants to control how, where, when, and on what the media reports. And he’s been very litigious in doing so.
In this case, Prince Harry’s photos showed him next to various animals, including an elephant and rhino. The royal had posted the photos to celebrate Earth Day 2019. In turn, the Daily Mail on Sunday ran a story titled “Drugged and tethered … what Harry didn’t tell you about those awe-inspiring wildlife photos.” It claimed that Harry’s photos “don’t quite tell the full story.” This, the Daily Mail said, was because he hadn’t made clear that the animals were tranquilized and tethered.
Although I find IPSO’s very existence offensive as an American, flying in the face of press freedom, its decision is to be welcomed.
“The photograph of the elephant had been cropped to edit out the animal’s tethered leg,” the organization said. “The [Daily Mail] had demonstrated that the photograph could have been edited differently and the complainant accepted that the album could have been uploaded in a different format which would have made editing the photograph unnecessary. The accompanying caption did not make the position clear or that the images had previously been published, unedited, in 2016.”
Good stuff. But the ruling’s importance isn’t simply that the paper on Sunday had been vindicated. Following Prince Harry’s and his wife Meghan’s recent decision to step away from royal family duties, the couple has kept threatening legal action against the press. Their latest complaint is that Canadians have been taking photos of them as they walk down the road. No, I’m not joking.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Other Harry high points from last year included his freakout at a journalist who dared to ask him a question at a public event, and the couple’s whinging to a broadcaster that the media is too unfair to them. Oh, and that time when Harry set Elton John loose on Instagram, to complain that the media were being unfair by pointing out Harry’s hypocrisy in flying by private jet while telling everyone to do more on climate change.
The tragedy here is that Prince Harry, until quite recently, used to be a pretty cool guy. But no longer. The former attack-helicopter pilot and party boy now spends his days refusing to be a royal, demanding free security, and attempting to stop the media from doing its job, which is why rulings such as Thursday’s from IPSO are so important.
