Following a significant outcry, the British newspaper The Sun on Friday stated it regretted running a letter by former Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson about Prince Harry’s wife Meghan.
Last week, Clarkson stated that he “hated” Meghan and fantasized about the day when she would leave him “when she is made to parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain while the crowds chant, ‘Shame!’ and throw lumps of excrement at her”.
More than 20,000 complaints, a record number, were filed about the column to the UK Independent Press Standards Organization (Ipso), and several well-known people, including novelist Philip Pullman and London Mayor Sadiq Khan, criticized it.
The piece had been taken down from the newspaper’s website after it was published in response to the couple’s most recent Netflix docuseries, “Harry & Meghan.”
“We at The Sun regret the publication of this article and we are sincerely sorry,” The Sun said in a statement on its website.
The article would also be deleted from its archives said The Sun
The Sun had previously removed the item on Monday from its online at the request of Clarkson who stated on Twitter he made “a clumsy reference to a scene in Game of Thrones and this has gone down badly with a great many people”.
He added: “I’m horrified to have caused so much hurt and I shall be more careful in the future.”
One of the most well-known sequences from Game of Thrones features a female character being forced to perform a “walk of shame” while being pelted with trash.
The Sun stated that although “columnists’ ideas are their own, we as a publisher realize that with free expression comes responsibility.”
Harry and Meghan accuse the ferocious UK tabloid press in the Netflix documentary of racism, of attempting to “destroy” her, and of causing her miscarriage through a targeted campaign fueled by palace briefings.