Prince Harry became outspoken at the 2024 New York Times Dealbook Summit, and one of the topics he opened up during his extensive interview with journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin was the issue of press and social media inaccuracies.1

"I've seen stories written about myself that are not exactly based on reality," said the Duke of Sussex, sharing that it was a very strange upbringing to have what is known as the Royal Rota covering all your moves".

When it comes to British media (the Royal Rota is the press pool assigned to cover the Royal family), Prince Harry has "access to his charity

that's what he had to deal with his whole life, and Sorkin has either read his press or added "Google Alerts" to his name. Prince Harry said "I'll do it when I need it," but on the front of the Google alert he said no.

"There are moments of reading a lot and moments of not reading anything, and I highly recommend the latter," Duke continued. He added that when you stop reading things about yourself, you "automatically remove power" from the media.

Prince Harry continued to explain why he did not stop reading about himself earlier. "That element of fear has an element of control. One of the reasons I probably didn't get myself out of that situation early was the very fear: "Well, they control the story."Whatever I do, they can effectively control me and keep me in that space.

The Duke of Sussex — who advised people not to "google yourself" — shared that he does not have a social media account. When Sorkin asked Harry if he had a "burner account," he jokingly asked, "Why?" Do you want to follow me "What is it going on?"

When it comes to awkward comments made online about himself and others, he later said, "The people I feel most sorry for are trolls."

"Really I do. I mean it," continued the Duke of Sussex. But he pointed to Sorkin, "There is no doubt that everything we talked about today in the last 25 minutes will somehow rotate or twist against me."

When discussing Duke's phone hacking case, Sorkin said that Prince Harry described the British press as a "law-abiding" and that he told all journalists

"Well, first of all, I wouldn't be here if I thought you were one of them." Just as we are absolutely clear. But we still have about 20 minutes left," Prince Harry said with a laugh.

The Duke shared that he couldn't say much about his case, but he said, "What people think they've seen lately is probably some mainstream mede that's kind of a competition of people who can hide the truth, lie or mislead us more."

He explained that one of the reasons that "brought the allegations" against Rupert Murdoch's newsgroup newspapers was "especially for truth and accountability."The Duke of Sussex spoke about the media as a whole and said it was "hard to make peace" with the fact that some writers have "clickbait" headlines on articles that are protected because the content of the story itself does not violate the law.

"I will be damned if those journalists are trying to ruin journalism for everyone else because we are so dependent on it," Prince Harry said.

This is Duke's second trip to New York City this fall after attending numerous events during UN Climate Week. Sorkin pointed out that the media is making a big deal from his wife, Meghan Markle, who is home at another event in California on Wednesday night

"You just ignore it," the Duke of Sussex said.