When Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, moved from Britain to the United States in 2020, he described it as an act of survival against the implacable intrusion of the British press.
After a chaotic meeting with photographers in New York on Tuesday, Harry discovered what the media gaze can be equally intense in his foster home.
As details continue to be leaked about exactly what happened to Harry, Meghan and their mother, Doria Ragland, as photographers chased them through midtown Manhattan, the episode highlighted a key paradox in the life of this celebrity couple:
They advocate privacy, but also seek publicity, with a documentary by Netflixa Harry memoir and public appearances that will inevitably attract the cameras.
The frenzy in New York is reminiscent of Harry’s decades-long grievances against the British press, which remains the main market for paparazzi photos of him and Meghan.
In 1997, his mother, the Princess Dianadied in a car crash in Paris while fleeing photographers;
Harry blamed them for his death and expressed fears that history could repeat itself with his wife and family.
But the episode also illustrates a dilemma for Harry:
Not even the intervention of the New York police department prevented his family from being harassed by the paparazzi, who followed them even after taking refuge in a police station.
The police’s role in Tuesday’s incident is attracting attention in London as Harry has filed a legal case against the UK’s Home Office, after the latter rejected his request that the Metropolitan Police provide him with protection for him and his family when they visit Great Britain.
“The example of what happened in New York suggests that the kind of police protection Harry wants in London won’t be enough to protect him or his family,” said Ed Owens, a historian who has studied the relationships between the monarchy and the media.
“He’s not involved in this reality.”
In California, where they now live, Harry and Meghan employ private security guards who are licensed to carry guns.
But in Britain they are not allowed to travel with armed guards, which is why Harry asked for police protection and offered to pay for it himself.
Interior Ministry lawyers argued in court that the police officers it should not be rented to paying customers.
Harry described the loss of his security team as one of the more worrying consequences of his bitter separation from his family and his withdrawal from royal duties.
In his memoirs “Replacement“, he wrote that since childhood he had never traveled without three armed bodyguards.
During negotiations with palace officials about his new status, Harry begged to be spared by the bodyguards, even if he lost all other royal privileges.
“I have offered to cover the security costs out of my own pocket,” he wrote.
“I wasn’t sure how I was going to do it, but I was going to find a way.”
The burden of paying for 24-hour security, people who know the couple say, is one of the reasons Harry and Meghan came to thelucrative deals publishing and programming with Netflix and Penguin Random House.
In a statement on Wednesday, the couple’s spokesperson suggested the threat posed by the photographers was just as much to pedestrians, other motorists and police officers as it was to the couple or Ragland.
He described “an almost catastrophic car chase at the hands of a group of very aggressive paparazzi”.
This is more dramatic than the accounts from the NYPD and the cab driver who picked up the couple and Ragland.
The driver, Sukhcharn Singh, said he would not call it persecution, adding that he was not afraid, even though his passengers clearly were.
A police spokesman acknowledged the photographers posed a challenge, but said the three arrived at their Upper East Side destination with “no collisions, citations, injuries or arrests reported.”
The New York Police Department declined to comment on the deployment of security for high-profile visitors to the city.
But an official familiar with the trial said the police are doing their own thing independent investigation and analyzing those visits, before deciding whether to provide additional security.
News coverage of the encounter, which was flamboyant on both sides of the Atlantic, pointed to discrepancies in reporting of the episode.
But this time, New York tabloids gave it more prominence than their London counterparts, which ran front-page photos of the pair but no judgmental headlines.
The title on the first page New York Post read: “Duke (and Duchess) of Hazard”, an American series about two brothers who run races) while The Daily News said: “Creepy echo of Diana”.
Harry has pending lawsuits against the publishers of three London tabloids, The Daily Mail, the Daily Mirror and the Sun, which he accuses of invading his privacy by hacking his cell phone and other illegal methods.
Meghan has won a lawsuit against the editor of the Mail on Sunday for publishing a private letter she sent to her father, Thomas Markle, from which she was separated, at the time of her marriage.
In one of Harry’s cases, against the British newspaper group of Rupert Murdock, Harry said the company paid a “huge sum of money” in 2020 to settle allegations that its reporters hacked into the mobile phone of his older brother, Prince William.
The company and Kensington Palace, William’s office, declined to comment.
The evidence of systematic hacking of the phones of celebrities, royalty and others led to the Leveson Inquiry, a legal inquiry that resulted in publishers ending the practice of phone hacking.
The aggressiveness of photographers who follow celebrities and members of the royal family has also curbed.
While paparazzi While they have shown some restraint since being publicly shamed in Britain, they still have a lot of leeway in the US, where they have faced less backlash against their methods.
According to historian Owens, the British press accepted these measures because they feared that the government would otherwise impose mandatory restrictions on them.
A period of relative calm with the press began for the royal family, which ended only when Harry began dating an American actress named Megan Markle.
“The lives of the royal family should have gotten easier in the UK” after the press coverage subsided, Owens said.
“At the same time, the toxicity of the relationship between the royal family and the media has continued. There has been both a softening of the approach of the press and a more aggressive approach by the family in the way they are covered.”
In the Netflix documentary “Harry & Meghan,” the pair are shown nervously looking out the windows of their SUV in case photographers chase them as they pull out of a parking lot and head to an event.
The scene is set in Manhattan.
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Source: Clarin
Mary Ortiz is a seasoned journalist with a passion for world events. As a writer for News Rebeat, she brings a fresh perspective to the latest global happenings and provides in-depth coverage that offers a deeper understanding of the world around us.