The Duchess of Sussex has complained to the BBC about Amol Rajan’s reporting of her legal case against the Mail On Sunday in his podcast, Press Association has reported.
Rajan fronted BBC Two’s The Princes And The Press documentary and said in his accompanying Harry, Meghan And The Media show that Meghan cooperated with author Omid Scobie on the Finding Freedom biography and “apologised for misleading a court on this."
A statement issued by the BBC on its website under Corrections and Clarifications said: “We stated that the Duchess of Sussex apologised for misleading the court in her case against Associated Newspaper Group.
“The Duchess of Sussex has asked us to clarify that she apologised to the court for not remembering email exchanges with her former communications secretary, Jason Knauf, in her evidence, and said that she had no intention to mislead the court.”
Rajan’s documentary about Harry and William’s relationship with the media was criticised by Buckingham Palace, Clarence House and Kensington Palace.
They claimed it gave credibility to “overblown and unfounded claims”.
This later led to the broadcast of the Duchess of Cambridge’s carol service being moved from the BBC to ITV.
Rajan later apologised for the comments he made about the royal family a decade ago, when, writing for the Independent newspaper which he used to edit, he called the Duke of Edinburgh a “racist buffoon” and the Prince of Wales “scientifically illiterate”.
Markle recently won her case against Associated Newspapers Limited after suing over five articles that reproduced parts of a letter to her father.
The issue came up in court as to whether Meghan and the Duke of Sussex helped authors Scobie and Carolyn Durand with the Finding Freedom book about their lives.
The duchess’ lawyers said in 2020 that accusations Meghan “collaborated” with the writers was a “conspiracy theory”, but two months later it emerged that Meghan allowed an unnamed individual to speak to Scobie and Durand to prevent “further misinformation”.
Meghan and Harry’s former communications secretary Jason Knauf went on to tell the Court of Appeal a year later that he discussed the book on a routine basis, with Meghan giving him several briefing points to share with the authors, including about her childhood relationship with her half-siblings.
In a written statement to the Court of Appeal in November, the duchess said: “I apologise to the court for the fact that I had not remembered these exchanges at the time. I had absolutely no wish or intention to mislead the defendant or the court.”
Rajan said on the podcast: “It has since been revealed that Meghan Markle co-operated with him (Scobie) on the project. She’s apologised for misleading a court on this.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article