Prince Harry said in a new interview he finds America’s First Amendment “bonkers” after arriving here from England last year.
The Duke of Sussex appeared Thursday on Dax Shepard’s “Armchair Expert” podcast, in which the two discussed the issues their families have faced with the paparazzi in the U.S.
Mr. Shepard, an American actor, argued that the First Amendment protects the freedom of the press, “and in some ways, it should,” because of its importance for democracy.
Prince Harry, however, had other thoughts.
“What is our human right as an individual and as a family?” he asked. “There’s no public interest in you taking your kids for a walk down the beach. … News should stay as news. What has happened in today’s world is the news has been hijacked and used to commercially benefit a small group of people.
“I don’t want to start, sort of, going down the First Amendment route because that’s a huge subject and one in which I don’t understand because I’ve only been here for a short period of time,” he continued. “But you can find a loophole in anything. And you can capitalize or exploit what’s not said rather than uphold what is said.
“I believe we live in an age now where you have certain elements of the media redefining to us what privacy means, and that is a massive conflict of interest,” he said. “And then you’ve got social media platforms trying to redefine what free speech means.
“I’ve got so much I want to say about the First Amendment as I still don’t understand it, but it is bonkers,” he added.
In January 2020, Prince Harry and his wife, American actress Meghan Markle, announced that they were stepping back from their roles as senior members of the royal family and moving to California.
In March, Prince Harry joined the Aspen Institute’s new Commission on Information Disorder, which includes journalist Katie Couric, in tackling what the commission describes as a misinformation and disinformation crisis in the U.S.
