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Rupert Murdoch’s UK tabloid newspaper business has apologised to Prince Harry and agreed to pay him “substantial damages” as it admitted for the first time that unlawful activities took place at The Sun.
David Sherborne, barrister for the Duke of Sussex, told the High Court in London on Wednesday that News Group Newspapers had offered the prince a “full and unequivocal apology” for intruding into his private life over 15 years until 2011.
The admissions are a blow to the Murdoch empire 13 years after it shut down the News of the World following a public outcry at phone hacking at the infamous Sunday redtop.
NGN has spent a decade denying any wrongdoing at The Sun, the News of the World’s daily stablemate, even as it paid more than £1bn in costs and settlements to cover almost all of the phone-hacking claims against the company.
NGN did not acknowledge any culpability on the part of senior executives in the settlement. It means the company will avoid what threatened to be a protracted and high-profile court case covering broad allegations of phone hacking and other unlawful activity, as well as claims of a cover-up involving current and former top executives.
The Duke of Sussex and former Labour deputy leader Lord Tom Watson were the only remaining claimants in the High Court case against NGN.
In a statement NGN said it was sorry “for the distress caused to the duke, and the damage inflicted on relationships, friendships and family”, and apologised in particular to the prince for its treatment of Diana, Princess of Wales, his late mother.
The company said the apology covered “incidents of unlawful activities carried out by private investigators working for The Sun, not by journalists, during the period 1996-2011”. It agreed to pay him “substantial damages”, although terms were not disclosed.
The company also offered a “full and unequivocal” apology to Watson for “unwarranted intrusion” into his private life by the defunct News of the World between 2009 and 2011, when he served on parliament’s culture, media and sport select committee investigating media malpractice.
It acknowledged he was placed under surveillance in 2009 by journalists at the Sunday tabloid and also agreed to pay him “substantial damages”. Terms were not disclosed.
Speaking outside the court, Sherborne, who represented both claimants, described the settlement as a “monumental victory”. Murdoch’s company had been “finally held to account for its illegal actions and its blatant disregard for the law”, he added.
The settlement will bring considerable relief to some of the Murdoch executives who were expected to be named in the case.
They include Rebekah Brooks, former editor of The Sun and now chief executive of News UK, and Will Lewis, who previously worked for Murdoch’s UK newspaper business and is now publisher of The Washington Post.
Lewis’s position in Murdoch’s news group at the time has been closely scrutinised since he took the helm of the US newspaper more than a year ago.
NGN has always said illegal voicemail interception took place only at the News of the World, which was shut down after it was disclosed that journalists at the paper had hacked the voicemail of murdered British teenager Milly Dowler.
It had until Wednesday made no admission of unlawful activities at The Sun, although it has previously reached financial settlements with individuals about the paper’s activities without any admission of liability.
Forcing an admission of fault from NGN has been a primary motivation for the Duke of Sussex, who was facing considerable financial risk in pursuing the case.
The case was set to be the climax of the prince’s campaign against Britain’s tabloid press, which he blames for the death of his mother, who was chased by paparazzi photographers before her death in a car crash in Paris in 1997.
The prince previously secured damages of £140,600 from Mirror Group Newspapers and has outstanding claims against Associated Newspapers, publisher of the Daily Mail.
Emma Jones, board director at campaign group Hacked Off, said the settlement marked a “humiliating day for The Sun and the senior executives at NGN, who have finally admitted that allegations of illegality made against the publisher are true”.
“It is now clear that the public and parliament were lied to by the newspaper and its publisher, as part of the most extraordinary corporate cover-up in living memory,” she added.
The settlement will mean the need for a further payout by Murdoch’s US broadcaster Fox, which covers all the costs under the terms of the separation of News Corp and 21st Century Fox.
Fox, in a similar eleventh-hour deal in 2023, agreed to pay $787.5mn to settle a defamation case in which it was accused by voting machine maker Dominion of broadcasting false accusations of election fraud in the 2020 US presidential election.
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