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“Meghan and Harry might now realize how good they had it. They’ve been treated with kid fucking gloves because we couldn’t afford to piss off the palace, and now they’re going to get a rude awakening.”
Those words were uttered to The Daily Beast by a senior news editor at one of Fleet Street’s most feared tabloid news operations after Meghan and Harry’s lawyers sent out legal notices warning against paparazzi actions on Vancouver Island this week. And they sum up what many in the industry believe: Not just is the couple’s desire to live a more peaceful life (as Harry described it) by leaving the U.K. for Canada a futile gesture, but the reality is that their new situation could result in much, much worse media intrusion than they ever experienced on British shores.
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That Harry blames the press for many of his woes is well-known—and entirely understandable.
In one of the bluntest interviews he has ever given, to a BBC documentary about his mother, Harry said: “I think one of the hardest things to come to terms with is the fact that the people that chased [Diana] into the tunnel were the same people that were taking photographs of her while she was still dying on the backseat of the car.
“William and I know that. We’ve been told that numerous times by people that know that was the case. She’d had quite a severe head injury but she was very much still alive on the back seat, and those people that caused the accident… instead of helping, were taking photographs of her dying on the back seat and then those photographs made their way back to news desks in this country.”
It’s a horrific scar to bear, and one that he has referenced frequently. Last year, Harry said in an interview with ITV’s Tom Bradby that he suffered trauma flashback from cameras, saying: “Every single time I see a camera, every single time I hear a click, every single time I see a flash, it takes me straight back. So in that respect, it’s the worst reminder of her life as opposed to the best.”
The long war between Harry and the press, however, shows no sign of going away simply by dint of his change of geographic location.
After pictures of Meghan walking her dogs in a local park with her baby in a harness on her chest were published in the U.K., a legal note was distributed directly to the dozen or so photographers (mainly American) who are now thought to be on Vancouver Island, by the couple’s media lawyers, Schillings. And another was sent to newspaper offices.
The note, seen by The Daily Beast, is familiar to anyone who has covered the greater royal story for any length of time, a familiar mixture of heartfelt pleading and heavy-handed threats, as if they still can’t quite decide on whether charm or fear is the best strategy.
The note said the family “have a right to be free from intrusion and harassment by paparazzi in and around their home,” highlights how “paparazzi photographers have them under surveillance, are attempting to follow them in cars and on motorbikes,” and says that they are faced with the prospect of photographers “prowling” outside their lavish mansion.
The couple accept the “interest in their circumstances,” but say there is “no justification for the intrusion” and also mention their human rights, as specified under Article 8 of the European Convention, presumably intended as a warning to outlets in European countries not to publish such images.
Canadian media lawyers told The Daily Beast that there is a good case to be made that the photographers are violating Canadian law by covertly photographing the couple, but that it is also unlikely anything concrete can actually be done to stop the paparazzi.
Dan Burnett, who practices at the Owen Bird Law Corp. in Vancouver, is an expert on the issue, having co-authored the Canadian Privacy Law chapter of the U.S.-based Media Law Resource Center’s guide to media law.
Speaking about the recent photos of Meghan, he told The Daily Beast that British Columbia law forbids you “to violate the privacy of another,” and specifically prohibits “surveillance” of a person, which may explain why the term was used in the note.
“A key question the courts here have looked to is whether in all the circumstances there is a reasonable expectation of privacy,” Burnett said. “Factors such as children and surreptitious photography would be an important consideration supporting the potential claim here. The fact it was in a public place would lean the other way, but the fact the photographers were hiding suggests they knew she considered it private.”
Another media lawyer, Chris Dafoe, points out that under Canadian law, privacy “is not an absolute right, and must be weighed against other competing rights, including, arguably, freedom of press and of expression, and depends very much on the circumstances on intrusion on privacy, and the parties involved.”
He says the scope of the right is typically summed up by the phrase “reasonable expectation of privacy.”
“Sometimes that’s pretty simple,” says Dafoe, “If you’re in a public place, it is less likely that a court will find that you have a reasonable expectation of privacy. If you’re a person who seeks publicity, your reasonable expectation of privacy, may be less than someone who does not seek the spotlight.”
Indeed, one easy way for Harry and Meghan to significantly reduce their attractiveness as a target to photographers and increase their legal right to privacy would be to allow their profiles to fade, but that seems unlikely. Their wish to earn an income appears impossible to uncouple from their celebrity.
Relying on Canadian law might not be a feasible solution for Harry and Meghan, because of the difficulties involved in actually enforcing action against specific photographers.
Burnett says: “If it is foreign paparazzi here temporarily, it makes a lawsuit theoretically solid—but it would be impractical (although not impossible) to enforce a judgment,” and this despite the fact that, as he said, “the culture here is much more towards leaving celebrities alone, and I expect that general sensibility would be shared by most judges here.”
The irony of all this is that by far the most comfortable place for Harry and Meghan to be, in terms of minimizing hated media scrutiny and harassment, is in the U.K., where a series of delicate truces have been negotiated with the press since Diana’s death.
Attend any media scrum around Harry and you’ll hear the photographers calling out to him, “Sir! Sir!”
There could be no clearer demonstration of the cotton wool in which Harry has been partially and unevenly wrapped.
An astonishing fact is that since the date of their marriage until the pictures of Meghan in the park appeared, not one unauthorized picture of Harry and Meghan doing anything privately has been published by the U.K press.
This stands, despite the fact that they are regularly seen out and about at venues such as Soho Farmhouse in Oxfordshire and at various restaurants and bars, and cam-phone pictures of the couple are regularly offered to Fleet Street picture desks.
Last year, for example, unusually clear footage of Harry and Meghan sitting down to eat at a country pub shortly after Archie’s birth was hawked around the U.K. papers, none of whom touched it.
This is not to say there have not been disgusting examples of press intrusion into Harry and Meghan’s private life by cameras—one photo agency flew a drone up to their country house in an attempt to get pictures through the windows, which they were presumably planning to sell overseas.
But such events are the glaring exception rather than the daily occurrence they have been for the couple since the location of their Vancouver Island hideaway became public.
There are vanishingly few photographers still hiding in bushes in England in the hope of getting a snap of the royals because none of the U.K. papers will buy them.
But if Harry and Meghan choose to develop and promote themselves as big American stars, they will likely once again be subjected to incessant “surveillance” by the paparazzi swarm, and given the vast financial rewards on offer, no amount of well-meaning but rather toothless Canadian legislation is likely to stop it.
