Prince Harry - Prince Harry's Vegas Pictures: Was 'The Sun' Right To Publish?

The Press Complaints Commission said it had received 150 complaints about the images from the public, though that none had come from St James's Palace. The newspaper - owned by News International (currently caught up in the phone hacking scandal - made the move despite warnings from the Royal Family's lawyers that it would be an invasion of the Prince's privacy. It seemed a strange decision from the newspaper, given that the UK press had shown unity in not showing the pictures, and considering the public had been able to view them on American entertainment website Tmz.com for days. The Sun's managing editor David Dinsmore said, "Hundreds of millions of people have seen these pictures over the internet and it seems perverse that they shouldn't be shown in the pages of our newspaper". Conservative MP Louise Mensch said there's a "clear and demonstrable" public interest in the story - presumably to see Prince Harry stark naked. The pictures emerged from a private weekend the Prince spent with friends in Las Vegas. The two photographs show Harry and a naked woman in a hotel room, during what was believed to have been a game of strip billiards.

Paul Ashford, editorial director of the Daily Star and Daily Express, rejected The Sun's argument, telling the Bbc that "a very much stronger public interest ground" was needed to publish the pictures. The ever colourful London Mayor Boris Johnson commented, "The real scandal would be if you went all the way to Las Vegas and you didn't misbehave in some trivial way". The Sun don't seem to be coming out of this very well - earlier in the week they had attempted to recreate the naked photograph by using journalist Harry Miller, 31, and fashion intern Sophie Anderson, who they denied was forced to strip for the image.