“The Committee did not consider that it was significantly misleading.”
Prince Harry’s complaint against the Mail on Sunday concerning images he shared on his Instagram account has been dismissed.
The Duke of Sussex filed the complaint following an article that stated the images shared on the Sussex Royal account of animals in Africa “did not quite tell the full story.”
The article claimed that one image had been cropped to remove evidence of a tether, and that animals in others were tranquillised.
The complaint was dismissed because “it was not clear from the images themselves that the animals had been tranquillised and tethered.”
A spokesperson for Prince Harry said at the time that the image in question had not been cropped intentionally, but due to Instagram’s format.
“The article claimed that the ‘pictures… don’t quite tell the full story’ and commented that the complainant ‘notably avoided explaining the circumstances in which the images were taken’, namely that all three of the animals had been tranquillised and that the elephant had also been tethered as they were being relocated as part of conservation projects.
“It reported that followers of the complainant’s Instagram account were unable to see a rope around the hind legs of the elephant because of the way the picture was edited.”
The ruling concluded that the Mail on Sunday’s article was not “significantly misleading” and that Prince Harry’s post on the Sussex Royal Instagram account “had not explained the circumstances in which the photographs had been taken.”
“The photograph of the elephant had been cropped to edit out the animal’s tethered leg,” it read.
“The publication had demonstrated that the photograph could have been edited differently and the complainant accepted that the album could have been uploaded in a different format which would have made editing the photograph unnecessary.”
This comes a few weeks after Harry and Meghan announced their intentions to leave the royal family.
The Duke said that he had been left with “no other choice” but to step back from his royal duties.
“What I want to make clear is we’re not walking away, and we certainly aren’t walking away from you,” he said.
“Our hope was to continue serving the Queen, the Commonwealth, and my military associations, but without public funding. Unfortunately, that wasn’t possible.
“We are taking a leap of faith – thank you for giving me the courage to take this next step.”
