A Mail on Sunday journalist knew the Princess of Wales was pregnant with her first child before it was announced but did not want to ‘cross a line’ by reporting it, the High Court heard on Tuesday.
Charlotte Griffiths said William told guests at a friend’s country house party in 2012 that his wife would not be joining them as she was suffering with morning sickness.
The news had not yet been made public and the prince had not told the Royal Family, the court heard. Ms Griffiths, then the diary editor at The Mail On Sunday and one of the guests, decided not to tell the paper.
In a written witness statement given to the High Court as part of Prince Harry‘s privacy case, she said her then-editor, Geordie Greig, was ‘quite annoyed’ when the pregnancy was announced by St James’s Palace three days later.
She said: ‘I missed a scoop to maintain my friendships and because I knew where the line was and decided not to cross it.’
Prince Harry and six other public figures are suing the Daily Mail and the MoS over claims they were the targets of unlawful information gathering by the newspapers.
Associated Newspapers, which publishes both titles, denies allegations its journalists commissioned private detectives to hack voicemails, intercept landline calls and ‘blag’ private information.
Ms Griffiths denied she used hacking or blagging to find information and told the court she relied on a network of ‘society contacts’. They included friends of both Harry and William who invited her to events, she said, including parties attended by the princes.
Princess Kate and Prince William with their first child, Prince George, in 2013
She denied an accusation by David Sherborne, for the claimants, that she had ‘invented’ William telling guests at the party in Wiltshire about his impending fatherhood.
Mr Sherborne questioned why the prince would have told party guests before he told his grandmother the Queen, his father Charles or his brother Harry.
Ms Griffiths said: ‘William arrived solo on the Friday and explained that Kate was suffering with morning sickness. The fact that she was pregnant with their first child would have been big news and St James’s Palace only confirmed it the following Monday because she had to be admitted to hospital.
‘Geordie [Greig] found out that I had known and was quite annoyed that I hadn’t reported it to him as we would have scooped the rest of the press, but it was information I had learned at a private event I was attending in a personal capacity, so I treated it as such.’
Ms Griffiths, a married mother of two, said she had also attended two parties where Harry was a guest, including an all-night gathering in London.
Records showed a phone call and three text messages between her and Harry, the court heard. Ms Griffiths said these were not linked to her work. She told the court he had added her as a friend on Facebook in 2011, after she had started working at the MoS, and had given her his number.
She said she had needed to call or text him on the night of the party, to which she had been invited by a mutual friend, as the music was too loud to hear the doorbell.
Ms Griffiths said she first met some of Harry’s friends as a teenager. Mr Sherborne said Harry cut contact with her once he learned she was a journalist.
During his evidence, the Duke of Sussex said neither he nor his friends spoke to journalists.
The trial continues.
