The ex-royals Meghan Markle and Prince Harry have been in the news for their new tell-all docuseries ‘Harry & Meghan’ on Netflix. The new two-part docuseries have touched upon the various facets of their lives and it intimately chronicles their love story and struggles. One of the facets that the docuseries also covered was the role of media in their lives before the Royal Family exit and now.
The media and paparazzi culture have been prominent in the lives of the Royal Family for a long time. One of the pap’s favorite royals was Harry’s mother, Princess Diana. However, the relationship between the paparazzi and Diana became toxic. They started invading her privacy. Even when she died in an unfortunate car accident, the paps came under a lot of fire for insensitivity. Nothing changed for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. There was an instance when the paps overstepped due to which the couple filed a lawsuit. What led to the filing of a lawsuit?
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Prince Harry And Meghan Markle Filed A Lawsuit For The Breach Of Privacy
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex welcomed their second child Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor in 2019. A year later they signed off from their royal duties in 2020 and shifted to California in the United States with their children. The couple could not evade the paparazzi culture in the US as well.
They were constantly photographed, but the limits were crossed when they came across pictures of the newborn taken without their knowledge and permission in 2020. Michael J. Kump, their lawyer, immediately filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles against the paparazzi who took the picture.
The complaint said, “The couple recently learned that someone is shopping photographs of their 14-month-old son, Archie, falsely claiming to have taken them on a ‘recent’ public outing ‘in Malibu’ “.
As per the complaint, since the family arrived in California, they have not taken the child out and the pictures were taken by trespassing on their property and clicking without their knowledge in their backyard. California law does not allow taking any kind of picture from anywhere in the vicinity of an individual’s house.
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He Slammed Media In The Netflix’s Docuseries
In ‘Harry & Meghan’, Prince Harry also highlighted the unwarranted media attention and the grievous repercussions of it. In one of the episodes, he talked about the ‘Royal Rota’, a roster of journalists and reporters who are given exclusive rights to cover the Royal Family.
He said, “That press pack of royal correspondents is essentially just an extended PR arm of the royal family. So there’s been an agreement that’s been there for over 30 years. If you’re part of the Royal Rota, you have priority over the story over everybody else”.
Harry took a dig at the Rota, where he explained the system with a hint of sarcasm. He continued, “So all royal news goes through the filter of all the newspapers within the Royal Rota, most of which, apart from the Telegraph, happen to be tabloids. It all comes down to control. It’s like, ‘This family is ours to exploit. Their trauma is our story and our narrative to control’ “ In the trailer, he admitted that he is afraid that he will lose Meghan like his mother due to obsessive media culture. He fears that history will repeat itself.
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