Prince Harry loses privacy case
Breaking news out of London: “The Duke of Sussex and six others have lost a high-stakes case against the publisher of the Daily Mail over allegations of unlawful information gathering,” CNN’s Lauren Said-Moorhouse reports.
“All of the claims were dismissed by a UK High Court judge on Tuesday after the group failed to prove the allegations against Associated Newspapers Limited,” she adds.
Reporters are combing through the 400-page judgment now. The Guardian’s media editor Michael Savage says the ruling “is likely to signal an end to new litigation relating to the phone-hacking scandal…”
The military newspaper Stars & Stripes just wants to maintain its freedom to report the news as it sees fit. “But in recent months, there are growing questions about its editorial independence,” Jane Pauley said, introducing a “CBS News Sunday Morning” cover story by David Martin about “the battle over Stars and Stripes.”
I’m sure it wasn’t lost on viewers that there have been “growing questions” about CBS’s independence, too.
But Martin’s report was heartening. It showed journalists continuing to do their jobs despite political pressure. Asked about the Pentagon’s claim that it would move the paper away from “woke distractions,” editor-in-chief Erik Slavin said, “I really don’t know what they were referring to, because they didn’t explain it.”
The Pentagon’s restrictions have spawned multiple lawsuits. Thankfully, reporter Lara Korte said, “I don’t feel like I’ve been stopped from covering any specific story.” But Korte feels like there “could be more to come.” You can read/watch the cover story here…
Graham Platner’s Senate campaign “is hanging on by a thread,” Playbook says, after one of his ex-girlfriends told CNN and Politico that he raped her while he was heavily intoxicated five years ago. Platner denies the allegations.
“I found her very credible,” Jake Tapper said after taping the on-camera interview with Jenny Racicot in Bangor yesterday. “There are a lot of men in this world relying on the silence of women to be where they are,” Racicot said, “and I don’t want to contribute to that.”
The fallout has also prompted some media self-scrutiny. Last night, NYT columnist Michelle Goldberg wrote about the people “liable for this disaster” and mentioned her own regret: “Last October, when stories about Platner’s tattoo and Reddit posts first broke, I went to Maine to write about him. I tried to convey what I saw: a campaign that was electrifying angry Maine voters. But I deeply regret that, impressed by Platner’s political charisma, I wrote that he was ‘nothing like the edgelord caricature I encountered online.’ If anything, he seems to be significantly worse.”
While Platner certainly had many supporters in progressive media, his conduct and character have been thoroughly scrutinized by the press, despite the common trope on the right about journalists “protecting” Democrats. Veteran media reporter Paul Farhi laid it all out on X last night, crediting the WSJ, the NYT, Politico and CNN with thorough reporting that ultimately unraveled Platner’s campaign…
In this case, the lack of news is the news. As this NYT headline puts it, Sen. Mitch McConnell “has been hospitalized for three weeks, and aides won’t say why.”
The Daily Beast’s Ewan Palmer says “speculation about the Kentucky Republican is continuing to intensify as his team refuses to provide new information about his treatment, his condition, or whether he will ever be able to return to work after he was hospitalized on June 14.”
Yesterday, The Hill “accidentally published” a McConnell “memoriam” article. McConnell’s office keeps issuing the same generic statement to reporters — even in response to questions about whether the senator is conscious. HuffPost turned that into a story. Meanwhile, some prominent MAGA media figures want “proof of life,” Palmer notes.
>> I live in Rep. Tom Kean’s district, so I know constituents were unsettled by his months-long silence. What about McConnell’s constituents?
“The annual Allen & Co. Sun Valley Conference begins on Tuesday in Sun Valley, Idaho, marking the start of an invite-only summit known as the ‘summer camp for billionaires,’” Business Insider’s Madeline Berg writes.
>> Forbes’ Jim Dobson has an explainer about the annual get-together here. “The secrecy is intentional,” he writes…
Richard Hanania is out today with “Kakistocracy: Why Populism Ends in Disaster,” a book that has lots to say about the right-wing media that Hanania knows well.
“Ten years ago,” he writes in this adaptation for UnHerd, “it would have been rational to criticize The New York Times for getting things wrong and to not worry too much about what conspiracy theorist personalities were saying. Today, the Joe Rogan Experience and other low-quality sources of information have influence comparable to that of the mainstream media.”
He cites Nick Shirley’s “shoddy reporting” from Minnesota, which led the Trump administration “to open investigations and begin a crackdown on illegal immigrants in Minneapolis… This is the kind of policy-by-word association you get under populist rule.”
>> Also out today: “How the Democrats Screwed Bernie” by Tad Devine, the top strategist on Bernie Sanders’ 2016 campaign, and “The Small Stuff: How to Lead a More Gratifying Life” by Ian Bogost.
“The only way to keep the USMNT and Mexico from setting new viewership records was to eliminate them from the World Cup,” Jon Lewis writes over at Sports Media Watch.
Indeed, the US audience for last night’s US–Belgium telecast likely surpassed the 39 million who watched last week’s round-of-32 match. We’ll have #s later this week.
As Belgium ended the US World Cup dream, Fox’s John Strong encouraged Americans to stay invested in soccer: “If you’ve enjoyed what you’re seeing, well, support your local team. This doesn’t have to be the last soccer you watch for the next four years. It’s a beautiful sport.”
Telemundo has been setting records just like Fox. Sunday night’s Mexico–England match averaged 9.4 million linear viewers (Peacock viewers are counted separately) and Telemundo says it’s “on track to become the highest-rated telecast in Spanish-language TV history.”
>> Check out these #s: In the UK, where the match began at 2 a.m. local time, 7.8 million people watched via the BBC. “Re-writing the history books, the match drew in the biggest television audience ever for a live UK broadcast at that hour… more than triple the previous overnight record,” the BBC says.
>> New York mag creative director Jody Quon “will be the next editor-in-chief of T Magazine, the New York Times’ style publication.” (Business of Fashion)
>> “One of the men charged with attacking a CBS News Chicago crew last week was in court Monday in an unrelated case.” (CBS)
>> “The YouTubers behind channels Scammer Payback and Trilogy Media” helped law enforcement uncover “a $65 million multinational fraud and money laundering scheme targeting elders.” (Variety)
“The way that we describe what success looks like is we want to be the largest and best platform for public conversation,” Connor Hayes, the head of Meta’s Threads, told the NYT’s Eli Tan for this recent story about the platform’s growth.
Tan says Threads “now increasingly resembles the social message board Reddit, as well as X,” as users gravitate to specific communities. “News and politics are discussed but are not the main draws…”
Kaley Glenn-Mills, the mostly anonymous plaintiff in the bellwether social media addiction trial against Google and Meta, is “now ready to be identified.” She opened up to Olivia Carville for this outstanding Bloomberg Businessweek story.
Carville’s kicker: “Most nights, Kaley sits on her new couch in her new home, scrolling social media in the dark, her face aglow from the phone screen. The irony isn’t lost on her — that she was plaintiff zero in the social media addiction litigation and she can’t stop scrolling. She’s tried to stop. After the trial, she bought herself a large flatscreen television and a book, All We Lost Was Everything. The book is sitting at the bottom of her closet, unopened; the TV has never been turned on. ‘Even now, even after the lawsuit, I’m still addicted,’ she says. ‘I’m still scrolling my life away.’”
>> New reporting from Reuters: “Meta says US states are seeking $1.4 trillion in penalties in August youth safety trial.”
The Supreme Court has “allowed Texas to enforce a law that requires mobile app stores to verify the age of users and obtain parental consent for minors attempting to install programs on their phones,” CNN’s John Fritze reports.
Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s “wedding was not filmed to be a documentary or for streaming,” Entertainment Tonight and other outlets reported yesterday. The way the reports were worded — “E! News has learned that their wedding was not filmed to be a documentary” — suggests an intentional leak from Swift’s camp to shoot down the fan and media speculation.
“Of course, there’s always a chance that Swift and Kelce will give fans an inside look at their nuptials if they decide to post on social media themselves,” Sabba Rahbar wrote…
>> “Tilly Norwood, the AI ‘actor’ who sparked a frenzy of anger in Hollywood and across the wider industry in late 2025, is set to front her first feature film.” (Variety)
>> Shakira and Burna Boy’s official World Cup song is a chart-topper for a second week. (Billboard)
>> Saving the least surprising news for last: Cinephiles are raving about Christopher Nolan’s Homeric epic, “The Odyssey.” (Variety)
This edition of Reliable Sources was edited by Andrew Kirell and produced with Liam Reilly. Email us your feedback and tips here.