Duke of Sussex ‘declined to respond’ to royal reporting debate invite

The Duke of Sussex declined to respond to an invite to take part in a debate about the future of royal reporting at a media freedom conference, the panel’s moderator has claimed.

Associate editor at The Telegraph Camilla Tominey opened a discussion at the Society of Editors’ Media Freedom Conference in London on Wednesday by telling the audience Prince Harry did not respond to a request for participation.

“We did invite Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, to take part in this panel but he declined to respond,” Ms Tominey said as she opened the panel discussion.

Before the beginning of the debate, the panel moderator read out a number of quotes from Harry about the media, including that the press had “gone to bed with the devil” and the claims of “the leaking and planting of stories”.

“So we know where one member of the royal family stands,” Ms Tominey told the conference.

Harry has spoken publicly a number of times about his views on the British media, as well as taking legal action against publishers for libel and alleged unlawful information-gathering.

At the conference, the Daily Mirror’s royal editor Russell Myers defended the media’s coverage of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, saying when Meghan first came on to the scene it was “overwhelmingly positive”.

The debate also covered a number of other controversies, including Jeremy Clarkson’s heavily criticised column about the Duchess of Sussex.

The Sun newspaper apologised and said it deeply regretted the article, in which Clarkson wrote he had dreamed of Meghan being paraded through British towns and publicly shamed.

The panel agreed they would “absolutely not” defend the column, with royal editor at the Sunday Times Roya Nikkhah saying the presenter himself had acknowledged he was wrong to write it and that it would “not have been printed in the Sunday Times”.