Why is Prince Harry taking on the press?

Beyond Today

BBC

News

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 4 October 2019

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

“I lost my mother and now I watch my wife falling victim to the same powerful forces”. This week Prince Harry released a strongly-worded statement attacking the way the press treats his wife Meghan. At the same time the couple announced they were taking legal action against the Mail on Sunday for publishing a private letter Meghan sent her father. And today we found out Harry is also suing the Sun and Mirror over alleged phone-hacking. Harry’s distrust of the press runs deep: as a child he witnessed his mother Princess Diana’s hounding by the media. Michael Cole was a BBC royal correspondent in the 1980s, and then became a spokesperson for Mohamed Al Fayad, the father of Diana’s boyfriend Dodi. He remembers the relationship between the press and the royal family in Diana’s day. And the BBC’s current royal correspondent Jonny Dymond assesses how Harry’s childhood has shaped his relationship with the press today. Presenter: Matthew Price Producers: Harriet Noble and Seren Jones Mixed by Nicolas Raufast Editor: John Shields

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.
0:06.3	Hello, I'm Matthew Price.
0:07.9	This is Beyond Today from BBC Radio 4.
0:11.0	Every day we ask one big question about one big story.
0:14.0	Today why is Prince Harry taking
0:20.0	why is Prince Harry taking on the press?
0:27.0	This is BBC Television from London. A short while ago Buckingham Palace confirmed the death of Diana Princess of Wales.
0:38.0	The princess died following a car accident in Paris. She was 36. It was quarter to one in the morning. I was in
0:46.1	bed but not asleep. The telephone rang. On the line was a reporter from one of
0:52.2	the newspapers that had been in the Vanguard of Harressing
0:56.8	Diana and he said to me that there'd been a crash in Paris and it was believed that
1:03.2	DoDy L. fired had been killed. By a strange chance
1:07.3	the princess's stepmother, Diana's stepmother,
1:10.7	reign, Countess Spencer, had come into my office on the Friday before this happened,
1:17.2	and I rang in the middle of the night, and I told her what I knew, and I gave her the number
1:21.9	of the hospital in Paris. I put the phone down and actually in
1:26.5	very short time like three or four minutes she called me back and she said to me, Diana has died.
1:35.0	She has not survived her.
1:37.0	Her injuries, she's dead.
1:39.0	I just sank to my knees and I wept right next to the the kitchen units with my wife
1:47.4	standing next to me I just wept and then for the first time I put on the television and I had the surreal experience of
1:56.2	sitting there for an hour and a half hearing them reporting as if Diana were alive.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.