Opinion | Prince Harry Is Right, and It’s Not Just a Matter of Royal Gossip

It was all transactional. Sandy Henney, a former press secretary, said of Charles: “When I joined his office in ’93 he was going through some pretty virulent criticism — ‘Bad father; unloving husband.’ I think he was pretty hurt.” She said Bolland worked to change Charles’s image. Leaking to the media was reportedly one way to curry favor. “Brilliant manipulator,” Henney said of Bolland. “He got the result that he wanted.” (Bolland denied these accusations.)

Bolland was also accused of approving a News of the World article claiming a 16-year-old Harry had taken drugs, in exchange for praise for Charles for taking Harry to a rehab center, illustrated with what the tabloid said were photos of the visit. Harry writes that the seven-page tabloid spread left him sickened and horrified, and the photos were from an earlier official visit he had made to the center. Bolland later admitted the sequence of events were distorted to make Charles look better. The coverage, after Diana’s death, spun the portrayal of Charles. “No more the unfaithful husband,” as Harry puts it in his memoir. “Pa would now be presented to the world as the harried single dad.”

I think I’ve made the case that Harry and Meghan have gotten a raw deal.

And I haven’t even mentioned that in response to all of this vitriol, would-be violent actors rose from the woodwork. Neil Basu, a high-level British law enforcement official, recently confirmed that Meghan received credible threats to her life, namely from the far right.

Even so, shortly after they left Britain, Harry and Meghan had their official security pulled abruptly. Harry says in “Spare” that his father didn’t step up then to help pay for replacement, despite now reportedly planning to shoulder 3 million pounds annually to provide security for his brother Andrew, accused of sexual exploitation of young women and girls (which he has denied), after Andrew’s official security ended, and whose 12 million pound settlement with an accuser was also reported to be partly paid by the queen.

The way the tabloids can spread unhinged claims, generating a sense of urgent threat to create a social frenzy, can be used for targets other than a stray royal.

During the run-up to the Brexit vote, among other outright big lies, British tabloids screeched that, thanks to a secret conspiracy being cooked up in Brussels, the European Union would allow hordes of Turks to invade Britain, commit crimes, have too many babies and bankrupt the social services. Turkey isn’t even a member of the E.U. and is nowhere near becoming one. Brexit narrowly won, with damaging consequences still unfolding for Britain.

My impression from his memoir is that Harry wants to make a crusade of applying sunlight to corrupt media practices and his family’s participation in them. If he succeeds in fighting the vile forces that he feels contributed to his mother’s death and imperiled his newfound love, he might bring a greater sense of decency in Britain, and maybe even curtail the power of the worst practices in media. Good luck to him.