News coverage of the encounter, which was extravagant on both sides of the Atlantic, pointed out the discrepancies in the accounts of the episode. But on this occasion, the New York tabloids made more of it than their London counterparts, which ran front-page photos of the couple but not judgmental headlines.
The New York Post’s front-page banner said “Duke (and Duchess) of Hazard,” while The Daily News said, “Scary Echo of Diana.”
Harry has lawsuits pending against the publishers of three London tabloids, The Daily Mail, The Daily Mirror, and The Sun, which he accuses of invading his privacy by hacking his cellphone and other illicit methods. Meghan won a case against the publisher of the Mail on Sunday for publishing a private letter she sent to her estranged father, Thomas Markle, at the time of her wedding.
In one of Harry’s cases, against Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper group, Harry said the company paid a “huge sum of money” in 2020 to settle claims that its journalists hacked the cellphone of his older brother, Prince William. The company and Kensington Palace, William’s office, declined to comment.
The evidence of systematic hacking of the phones of celebrities, royals and others led to the Leveson Inquiry, a judicial inquest that resulted in publishers ending the practice of phone hacking. They also curbed the aggressiveness of photographers who follow celebrities and members of the royal family.
While paparazzi have shown a degree of restraint since being publicly shamed in Britain, they still have a fairly free hand in the United States, where they have faced less of a backlash against their methods.
Mr. Owens, the historian, said the British press accepted these measures because they worried that if they did not, the government would impose compulsory curbs. For the royal family, that set off a period of relative calm with the press that only ended when Harry began dating an American actress named Meghan Markle.
