Prince Harry court drama today and it has reached peak levels of drama.
He has condemned ‘vile’ behaviour of tabloids who cast him as ‘thicko’ and ‘drug taker’ during evidence in hacking trial.
Witness statement – Prince Harry Court
Prince Harry’s has provided a 49 page written witness statement.
In it Harry describes how the tabloid media created the public character of ‘Prince Harry.’
You start off as a blank canvas while they work out what kind of person you are and what kind of problems and temptations you might have. They then start to edge you towards playing the role or roles that suit them best and which sells as many newspapers as possible, especially if you are the ‘spare’ to the ‘heir’. You’re then either the ‘playboy prince’, the ‘failure’, the ‘drop out’ or, in my case, the ‘thicko’, the ‘cheat’, the ‘underage drinker’, the ‘irresponsible drug taker’, the list goes on.
As a teenager and in my early twenties, I ended up feeling as though I was playing up to a lot of the headlines and stereotypes that they wanted to pin on me mainly because I thought that, if they are printing this rubbish about me and people were believing it, I may as well ‘do the crime’, so to speak. It was a downward spiral, whereby the tabloids would constantly try and coax me, a ‘damaged’ young man, into doing something stupid that would make a good story and sell lots of newspapers. Looking back on it now, such behaviour on their part is utterly vile.
I always felt as if the tabloids wanted me to be single, as I was much more interesting to them and sold more newspapers
Death
Harry in his witness statement says he is bringing the claim to “hold people accountable for what they’ve done”.
“How much more blood will stain their typing fingers before someone can put a stop to this madness,” Harry says in his witness statement.
‘Who has blood on their hands?’ the lawyer asked him in court today.
“Editors and journalists for causing a lot of pain, upset, and in some cases inadvertently death,” Harry said.
Harry says this is a broader statement rather than referring to a specific individual.
He did not directly mention Princes Diana.
Related: Watch: Phone hacking – Prince Harry offered apology as pressure increases on Piers Morgan
