News International-owned British tabloid The Sun is never one to shy from controversy, and despite criticism has become the first newspaper to publish the recent "scandal" of Prince Harry's alcohol-fuelled Las Vegas indiscretion.


The photographs originally appeared on US celebrity gossip site TMZ, but The Sun is the biggest newspaper in Britain, with its circulation dwarfing that of its competitors, and have duly published the pictures. Below is their statement in response to criticism, censorship and the debate over "public interest".

"We are publishing the photos because we think Sun readers have a right to see them. The reasons for that go beyond this one story. The images were first published on the web three days ago. But the Palace's lawyers, via the Press Complaints Commission, warned the UK's newspapers against printing them, claiming they would breach Harry's privacy and the PCC Code.
"Since then the entire UK media - print, online and TV - has reported on them and told readers and viewers how to find them on TMZ.com, the website that first published them, and on countless other sites that followed suit.
"That coverage put those pictures a mouse-click away from anyone in the 77 per cent of British households with internet access. Millions duly found them on sites from Canada to New Zealand. By yesterday, the photographs were indisputably in the public domain everywhere in the world.
"That generated a legitimate public debate about the behaviour of the man who is third in line to the throne and increasingly taking on official duties, as he did most recently at the Olympics' closing ceremony.
"Yet as that debate went on in homes, factories, offices and pubs, the Press were still effectively banned from using the pictures. The many millions of people who get their news in print, or have no web access, could not take a full part in that national conversation because they could not see the images.
"The Royal Family's lawyers claim there is no public interest in The Sun running the photos. This is a favourite mantra of those who wish to muzzle the world's most vibrant newspapers, here in Britain -stuffily declaring that a story has "no public interest", as though it were an unassailable fact. But there is a clear public interest in publishing the Harry pictures, in order for the debate around them to be fully informed. The photos have potential implications for the Prince's image representing Britain around the world.
"Lastly, we believe printing the photos IS within the Press Complaints Commission's code, based on a previous PCC ruling in favour of a UK magazine which published pictures already widely seen online. On that occasion the PCC said that in privacy matters its code"required the Commission to have regard to the extent to which material is already in the public domain. The Commission felt that the images were so widely established for it to be untenable for the Commission to rule that it was wrong for the magazine to use them.
"The Prince Harry pictures are a crucial test of Britain's free Press. It is absurd that in the internet age newspapers like The Sun could be stopped from publishing stories and pictures already seen by millions on the free-for-all that is the web. It was vital for us to run them."


As the debate rages over smartphones and privacy laws in the digital, instantaneous age where everyone is a publisher, The Sun's bold move has split opinion throughout the media.


Former deputy prime minister Lord Prescott said The Sun had shown ''absolute utter contempt'' for the law and for the Lord Justice Leveson inquiry into media ethics.
''It is not about privacy. It is about money, money, money. And they know that by exclusively printing the pictures, assuming they are the only (British) paper which does, they will get everybody buying the paper to see this.'' 


However, former editor of The Sun Kelvin MacKenzie welcomed the move.
''If Prince Harry with no clothes on in a Las Vegas hotel room surrounded by one naked woman and a load of other people he has just met in drinking-stripping game is not a story then it is hard to know what is. He must realise that with his rather important role as a prince of our country and is number three (in line) to the throne that he has to carry various responsibilities. People should stop worrying about privacy and start worrying about what free speech will mean to this country if the Levesons and the Camerons of this country have their way.''