Harry, 14 other commissioners and three co-chairs will conduct a six-month investigation into the state of US disinformation and disinformation.
Journalist Katie Couric, Color of Change president Rashad Robinson and Chris Krebs, former director of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, are the co-chairmen.
“This information crisis is undermining trust in our democratic institutions and is hitting the foundations of society,” Krebs said in a statement.
That’s what Aspen, a leading nonprofit, wants to investigate. The Institute announced its Information Disorders Commission in January with a mandate to develop “actionable public-private responses”.
The committee will meet in April and will hold a series of briefings with outside experts.
Aspen’s plan calls for an interim report after about 60 days “examining and framing the problem of the information disorder and prioritizing the most critical and urgent issues,” the institute said, and then a list of useful solutions and recommendations in the autumn.
The list of commissioners, released Wednesday morning, includes prominent figures such as former Texas congressman Will Hurd; Sue Gordon, former Chief Deputy Director of the National Intelligence Directorate; and Kathryn Murdoch, the co-founder and chairman of Quadrivium and Rupert’s daughter-in-law.
But the most notable name is certainly Prince Harry, who has been out in the public eye for the past few weeks thanks to his interview with Oprah Winfrey.
Harry and his wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, sat down with Winfrey and explained their decision to step back from senior positions in the British Royal Family and criticized the British press.
His own personal experiences with the media – particularly with lies and nonsense spread about his own life – are likely to inform his contributions to the committee.
“As I said, the experience of today’s digital world has inundated us with an avalanche of misinformation, affecting our ability as individuals and societies to think clearly and truly understand the world we live in,” said the Duke. from Sussex in a statement.
“I believe this is a humanitarian issue,” he said, “and as such it requires a multi-stakeholder response from advocates, members of the media, academic researchers and government and civil society leaders alike. of this new Aspen committee and look forward to working on a solution-focused approach to the information disruption crisis. ”
The institute’s press release on Wednesday identified Prince Harry as one of three philanthropic leaders who will be part of the project. The other two are Murdoch – who is married to Rupert Murdoch’s son James – and Marla Blow, the Skoll Foundation’s new president.
A week after the Winfrey interview, Harry and Meghan announced several donations from their Archewell Foundation, including to start-up news media.
His role on the Aspen committee is part-time. According to the institute, these will be regular meetings. The committee is funded by Craig Newmark Philanthropies.
Krebs said in his statement that the committee is committed to a “diversity of viewpoints” and roles, “from elected officials and civil society leaders to academic researchers and business leaders.”