Meghan Markle hounded like Diana? Hardly, British papers say

Could Meghan Markle really face the same fate as Princess Diana? Britain's newspapers on Wednesday angrily challenged US actor George Clooney's claim that their treatment of Prince Harry's wife resembled the hounding of his late mother.

Clooney, who attended the couple's wedding last year, on Tuesday stirred up a hornet's nest of discontent by accusing the London tabloids of giving the new Duchess of Sussex "a raw deal".

"She's a woman who is seven months pregnant and she is being pursued and vilified and chased in the same way that Diana was," the Hollywood superstar told Australian magazine WHO during an interview in Los Angeles.

"It's history repeating itself," Clooney warned. "And we've seen how that ends." The ending Clooney referred to was the 1997 car crash in Paris in which Diana died along with Dodi Al-Fayed as they fled the paparazzi.

The tragedy triggered mass public mourning in the UK and soul searching on the part of the press.

It turned royal reporters into villains and forced the media to significantly alter its code of conduct.

Pictures obtained through "persistent pursuit" were banned and a "reasonable expectation of privacy" had to be observed.

The arrival in British public life last year of the mixed-race US actress put these new rules to the test with initially positive coverage slowly giving way to stories about "Duchess Difficult".

Meghan, 37, was said to have been tough on staff, with tensions also reported between her and Prince William's wife Catherine.

Following months of unwanted publicity focused on rifts with her family, the Mail on Sunday also published a letter she wrote to her estranged father begging him to "stop lying" and "exploiting my relationship with my husband".

"You're taking a letter from a daughter to a father and broadcasting it everywhere," Clooney fumed. "It's irresponsible."
"I think (Meghan) is able to go about her life and walk in the park and be in restaurants and be a normal person without a dozen paparazzi following her," she said. "Diana was not able to do that."