Prince Harry and Hugh Grant will be featured in an ITV documentary focusing on ongoing legal battles and involvement in the phone hacking scandal titled Tabloids On Trial.
The Duke of Sussex alleges that he was targeted by journalists and private investigators working for News Group Newspapers (NGN) titles The Sun and the now-defunct News Of The World, which closed in 2011. In May, the prince’s lawyers were told by a London judge that he cannot expand the privacy lawsuit against to include allegations against media mogul Rupert Murdoch and presenter Piers Morgan.
In 2011, news broke that some of Britain’s biggest stars and figures were allegedly victims of a scandal whereby the media’s top newspapers were tapping landlines and fitting properties with listening devices in the name of journalism. NGN has denied any illegal activity took place at The Sun.
Grant, ex-soccer player Paul Gascoigne, and singer-songwriter Charlotte Church will also be featured in the documentary after claiming to have had their privacy violated by the tabloid press. (Grant settled the illegal snooping case in April).
In December, Justice Timothy Fancourt ruled in Prince Harry’s favor in a 386-page decision handed down in the High Court; he said that phone hacking, which for the prince dated back to 2003, was “widespread and habitual” at Mirror Group Newspapers — and that executives there had covered it up.
Prince Harry, who is breaking with royal tradition in this fight, becoming the first in the family to testify in open court in over a century, also has a pending case against British red top The Daily Mail.
ITV News’s Rebecca Barry will sit down with Prince Harry for his first major interview since the legal action commenced as the documentary “hears about his mission to continue his fight to expose the illegal tactics of Britain’s tabloid press, and explore what those in charge at Fleet Street really knew as this scandal unfolded.”
The program will air on ITV1 and ITVX on Thursday, July 25.
