Hugh Grant’s crusade against the overreaching nature of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire has been ongoing in some way or form since at least the mid-1990s, when Grant first filed a defamation lawsuit over claims he was verbally abusive on set and subsequently won. And now, in the wake of Prince Harry’s landmark win against Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers, Grant is calling on the government to start reopening the Leveson Inquiry and consider criminal investigations.
Prince Harry has managed to squeeze NGN into a corner where they had to issue a full apology and even acknowledge heinous instances of boundary-crossing acts like phone hacking. According to NPR, this admission is contradictory to what the company has claimed before, when former NGN executive Rebekah Brooks testified before Parliament that their newsroom is “a very clean ship.” Hugh Grant’s latest settlement with NGN came just last April, when he took a settlement that, according to him, he didn’t want to take but was forced to do so due to the exorbitant lawyer fees the case had amassed over the many years for phone tapping.
All these scandals led to the formation of the Leveson Inquiry, whereby a huge report was released with tons of recommendations, such as the formation of a new watchdog to oversee the press with the power to hand out fines and training journalists on ethics. However, some of these recommendations were never truly implemented, and this latest admission by NGN lawyers has prompted victims of press abuse, such as Grant, to come forward again and demand Leveson 2 to be implemented during a call to the BBC. Unfortunately for Grant, the Culture Secretary was quick to rule out Leveson 2, citing that news nowadays is consumed online and that that route is no longer “fit for purpose.”
Grant, however, didn’t respond with much anger. He acknowledged that politicians’ relationships with the press are inherently complex and admitted he has “some sympathy” for them, given NGN’s power in the UK. Still, he called on the Prime Minister to protect the public from “the abuses and criminality of big corporations.” This is a far cry from his earlier self — during his own legal battle with NGN, Grant famously labeled then-Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron either “an idiot or a liar” for claiming ignorance about the phone taps.
Ever-nosey Piers Morgan saw an opportunity and tried to test Grant, accusing him of hypocrisy for allegedly making millions of pounds working on Murdoch-owned films. Grant swiftly corrected him, pointing out that the last time he worked for a Murdoch-owned entertainment company was in 1994, long before he was aware of their unethical practices. It’s worth noting that Morgan has been a longtime ally of NGN, from the phone-hacking scandals of the mid-1990s to his current Piers Morgan Uncensored YouTube show — so he certainly has a vested interest in the matter.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Grant also stated, “They’ve spent £1 billion to make sure these things are never looked at in court … and you don’t get proper judicial findings. I think what they’re terrified of is that those findings would trigger a new criminal inquiry.” Until then, Grant declared, the job is “not done by any means.”
Hugh Grant will probably be making his next public appearance at the BAFTAs, where he’s nominated for Best Leading Actor for his wonderful performance in Heretic. It remains to be seen whether he uses the spotlight that night to shed light on this issue that he clearly cares deeply about.
