TAMER FAKAHANY
DEPUTY DIRECTOR – GLOBAL NEWS COORDINATION, LONDON
From Associated Press
UK Royals Lawsuit
Media www.rajawalisiber.com – The British royal family and the country’s tabloid news media have had a checkered past to say the very least in recent decades. A once symbiotic relationship of sorts has been poisoned by lawsuits and accusations of intrusion, hounding and most recently, racism.
In the latest episode, a British judge ruled that a newspaper invaded the Duchess of Sussex’s privacy by publishing a personal letter to her estranged father.
It was a major victory for the royal, the former Meghan Markle, in her campaign against what she sees as media intrusion, Jill Lawless reports from London.
Meghan, sued the publisher for invasion of privacy and copyright infringement over five February 2019 articles in the Mail on Sunday and on the MailOnline website, which published portions of a handwritten letter to her estranged father, Thomas Markle, after her 2018 wedding at Windsor Castle to Prince Harry, youngest son of the late Princess Diana.
The judge said Associated Newspapers misused the duchess’s private information. He added that the duchess “had a reasonable expectation that the contents of the letter would remain private. The Mail articles interfered with that reasonable expectation.”
Associated Newspapers contested the claim.
Meghan’s lawyers say the “deeply personal” five-page letter was intended for her father alone.
But the defense argued Meghan wrote the letter as part of a media strategy to rebut a negative view conveyed by her father, and with help from the communications team in the royal couple’s Kensington Palace office.
Meghan, an American actress and star of TV legal drama “Suits,” married Harry, a grandson of Queen Elizabeth II. In early 2020, Meghan and Harry announced they were quitting royal duties and moving to North America, citing what they said were the unbearable intrusions and racist attitudes of the British media. They recently bought a house in Santa Barbara, California.