As a loyal American, I naturally want to side with the Duchess of Sussex (nee Meghan Markle) in her growing feud with the British tabloid press. Yet the lawsuit that the duchess and her husband, Prince Harry, have brought against the Mail on Sunday raises serious questions about the freedom of the press.
Difficult as it is to find anything sympathetic to say about tabloids, they do consistently test the boundaries of free speech — and in this insistence, there really is reason to think that it would be bad for the free flow of information if the royals were to win their lawsuit.
To those accustomed to reading about libel lawsuits focused on salacious facts, the content of the material under dispute in the Sussex lawsuit seems remarkably tame. The central legal claim has to do with a letter the weekend edition of the Daily Mail published from Meghan to her estranged father, presumably provided to the newspaper by the father himself. The suit claims the letter was edited in an intentionally misleading way, omitting parts that would have made the duchess look better than she does in the printed version.
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