Prince Harry’s claim that a Sunday newspaper wrote an inaccurate article about wildlife pictures posted on his Instagram account has been dismissed by a newspaper industry regulator.

The UK royal complained to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) that the ‘Mail on Sunday’ breached the accuracy clause of its Editors’ Code of Practice in an article published last April.

Headlined “Drugged and tethered… what Harry didn’t tell you about those awe-inspiring wildlife photos”, the article reported on “spectacular photographs of African wildlife” which had been posted on Harry’s Instagram account to highlight Earth Day.

The article claimed that the “pictures … don’t quite tell the full story” and said the duke had “notably avoided explaining the circumstances in which the images were taken”.

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The animals had been tranquillised and the elephant had also been tethered as they were being relocated as part of conservation projects.

The newspaper reported that followers of Harry’s Sussexroyal Instagram account were unable to see a rope around the hind legs of the elephant because of the way the picture was edited.

Ipso said in its ruling that Harry had stated “he had not misled the public by failing to explain the circumstances in which the photograph of the elephant had been taken and that the article was inaccurate in claiming that he had sought to mislead the public by deliberately publishing an edited version of the photograph”.

Harry, who had taken the wildlife pictures posted on Instagram, told Ipso the article gave the misleading impression he had cropped out the tether to create the false impression that he was a superior wildlife photographer.

He said that the image had been cropped owing to the formatting requirements of Instagram.

The newspaper disputed the duke had to crop the image due to Instagram’s formatting requirements.

Ipso found the complaint was not upheld and said its complaints committee considered it was not clear from the images that the animals had been tranquillised and tethered.

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