STEPHEN GLOVER: If Prince Harry wants to ban the Press, he’ll have to ban himself

The real object of Prince Harry’s wrath is the press, and in particular the tabloids. In his ITV interview with Tom Bradby on Sunday night, he called him the ‘devil’.

That is a very disturbing way to describe newspapers in a free society. In some cultures, demons are considered freaks that must be hunted down and extirpated.

Harry may not actually want to kill the press, but he did tell Bradby that he wants to ‘change’ and ‘watch’. He claimed that the media is “at the epicenter of a lot of the problems across the UK where people suffer [and] I’m going to try to make a difference.’

Should we be worried? Does a somewhat confused and intellectually mediocre 38-year-old man living 6,000 miles away in California really pose a threat to a free press?

It hardly seems likely.

However, I think Harry’s attitude towards newspapers enlightens him. His narcissistic outpourings may have served to narrow his following, but there are still some young people who revere him as a progressive force.

They see him and Meghan as rebels eager to take on vested interests and the establishment, and to champion important causes close to their hearts, like climate change or anti-racism.

I see it differently. To me, Prince Harry is an exceptionally privileged and entitled person, some of whose views would have been considered standard by the most hateful aristocrat of the 18th century. His attacks on the free press fall into this category.

In his visceral hatred of newspapers that speak their minds and his desire to stop them, he reveals himself as a profoundly illiberal figure. These are opinions that one associates with tyrants who cannot stand freedom.

Am I overstating the case? Maybe, but only a little. Prince Harry, of course, doesn’t carry the ideological baggage of the average despot. Nor am I suggesting that he wants to lock up thousands of people. However, his attitudes towards the media are profoundly undemocratic.

What amazes me is how utterly wrong his analysis (if that’s not too lofty a word to describe his poisonous ramblings) of the media is. One could at least respect him as an iconoclast if he hadn’t so spectacularly caught the wrong end of the stick.

Because his theory, as revealed to Bradby and elaborated in his book, is that the royal family and the tabloids are symbiotic. He informed Bradby that some royals have decided to “get into bed with the devil.”

According to Harry, they and the newspapers have concocted a ‘distorted narrative’ about him and Meghan, who they have literally driven off our shores. During the ITV interview, he didn’t provide a single example of this allegedly abominable behaviour, and an emollient Tom Bradby only pressed him weakly.

Prince Harry revealed that, in his opinion, the main conspirator in the tabloids has been the queen consort Camilla. In an interview with American journalist Anderson Cooper, he scandalously described Camilla as a “villain” who has “exchanged information” in an attempt to rehabilitate her image.

It is true that for several years after the death of Harry’s mother, Diana, in 1997, Camilla often received unfavorable coverage in many newspapers, reflecting public opinion at the time. She was depicted as the mistress who had undermined Charles’s marriage to Diana.

However, after a few years, Camilla’s treatment by most titles gradually improved. Harry attributes this to a relationship she was allegedly cultivating with the press.

He told Bradby: “Stories began to appear everywhere, in all the papers, about his private conversation with Willie, stories containing exact details, none of which came from Willie, of course.

They could only have been leaked by the other person present. I mean, Camilla.

It does not occur to Prince Harry that the newspapers were more sympathetic to Camilla Parker-Bowles, as they were then, mainly because they recognized her as a good sportswoman who did not try to justify her past misbehavior and, moreover, she was clearly in love. with Carlos

As for Harry’s accusation that Camilla leaked stories to the press, in one case it can be refuted. A story of her first friendly meeting with Prince William appeared in the Sun newspaper after a personal assistant told her husband that she had recklessly gossiped with someone connected to the Murdoch empire. The assistant quit.

I would venture to say that some members of the royal family have passed stories to the press through their courtiers over the years, but it is absurd and naive to infer that this was part of an orchestrated attempt to destabilize Harry and Meghan.

The royals are not puppets of the press, as, if they have any sense at all, they realize that they can be mocked as well as praised. The wise know how to take the rough with the smooth. I wish the overly sensitive Harry and Meghan had learned something of Camilla’s pragmatism.

As for the newspapers, it is ridiculous to assume that they enter into a collective agreement not to criticize their alleged collaborators within the Royal House. On any given day, one newspaper will have praised Prince Charles, as he was, while another will have criticized him. The same newspaper can pat you on the back one month and punish you the next.

Prince Harry and Meghan have concocted an outlandish theory about alleged royal collusion to explain what they see as unfavorable treatment by the press, although in fact, before their 2018 wedding and for many months afterward, they enjoyed an almost exultant coverage.

Whether as a result of paranoia or plain silliness, Harry has demonized members of his family and misrepresented the press, and based on his silly theories, he wants newspapers to be made in accordance with his values. That smacks of tyranny.

Naturally, I do not dispute that the newspapers may have occasionally been unfair to the hypersensitive couple. A recent example was Jeremy Clarkson’s inane fantasy in The Sun that Meghan was “forced to parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain.” That was terrible, and the newspaper has rightly apologized.

But this was an aberration in the mainstream press, which Harry conveniently combines with social media, often a cesspool of evil. He claims, without offering any proof, that such displeasure is inspired by the newspapers.

I wish Harry and Meghan had learned, like most royals, to enjoy praise and ignore criticism. As King Charles told Harry, if you don’t like newspapers, you don’t have to read them.

Intermittent disapproval is the inescapable fate of every public figure. Politician Enoch Powell (who was right about some things) wisely said that ‘politicians who complain about the press are like sailors who complain about the sea’. So it is with royalty.

Harry and Meghan can’t understand this. As the conceited type of celebrity, they want to be fully represented on their own terms and can’t stand any interference with an image of perfection.

So Prince Harry would like to gag the Press. His is the illiberal voice of power.

I doubt it has occurred to him that if he bans the press, he will have to ban himself, since he is infinitely ruder and less respectful of his family’s privacy than any other newspaper.