Meghan Monsters Mail - Biter Is Bit

The game played by our free and fearless press, and especially the Mail titles, is well known: those they dislike are monstered, smeared, defamed, attacked and worse, unless and until they do the press’ bidding. This is especially true of the Royal Family, who, the press has decided, are public servants and therefore public property. The press can do with the Royals what they choose. After all, they “never complain, never explain”.

The Mail on Sunday decided it did not like the Duchess of Sussex: she did not bend to their will, and worse, she was not white. She was therefore fair game on two fronts. So the MoS obtained a personal letter she had written to her father and gratuitously splashed large parts of it across its pages. This was accompanied by a variety of smears and the occasional nudge-and-wink slice of racism. But then the Duchess bit back.

This meant the Mail titles merely ratcheted up their attacks on her, a typical headline being “‘This is a like a train ploughing into a petrol tanker. A complete disaster’: Legal experts say judge’s decision to dismiss major parts of Meghan Markle’s letter case against Mail on Sunday is a ‘humiliation’”. There was also “Manipulative Meghan knew Harry needed a strong woman in his life after Diana's death and exerted control by capitalising on events that hit his self-esteem”. The mind games came thick and fast.

But Meghan was not deterred. Yesterday she won. Associated Newspapers, publishers of the MoS, lost. As the BBC has reported, “Mr Justice Warby granted Meghan ‘summary judgment’ in her claim for misuse of private information against the publisher of the Mail on Sunday and MailOnline, meaning that part of the case is resolved without a trial”.

There was more. “Mr Justice Warby ruled that the publication of the letter … was ‘manifestly excessive and hence unlawful … It was, in short, a personal and private letter … The majority of what was published was about the claimant's own behaviour, her feelings of anguish about her father's behaviour - as she saw it - and the resulting rift between them … These are inherently private and personal matters’”.

What will have hurt the MoS was his coda: “There is no prospect that a different judgment would be reached after a trial”. The MoS wanted the threat of a trial, the ability for their lawyers to wash a little dirty family laundry where it could be reported - and relayed to the public in the MoS’ inimitable style. Their article on the judgment admits this.

Taking out a king-sized onion, Mail Online confesses. “The High Court's decision to grant the summary judgment means that Meghan will now not have to go into the witness box to give evidence in her privacy case, thereby avoiding a 'face off' against her estranged father, who was also expected to take to the stand on behalf of the publisher”.

Worse for the Mail titles, “The High Court's decision to grant it also means that one of the authors of Finding Freedom, a Royal biography on Meghan's life and marriage to the Duke of Sussex, will not give evidence either … Five close friends of Meghan's, who gave interviews to People Magazine in a February 2019 article, which also contained details of the letter will also now not have to give evidence. They were expected to travel from the US to be quizzed under oath on how the article came about”. Well, tough titty, eh?

The MoS has been exposed as dishonest and vindictive. Just rejoice at that news.

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