Meghan Markle is not one to mince words when it comes to her feelings about tabloids.
The Duchess of Sussex didn't hold back her opinions when she appeared at the The New York Times DealBook Online Summit on Tuesday, Nov. 9, calling tabloid media "toxic for your mental health" during a discussion with Andrew Ross Sorkin, the editor-at-large and founder of DealBook The New York Times, and Mellody Hobson, the co-CEO and president of Ariel Investments.
Meghan's candid comment came after Sorkin asked her what it's like "being a boss" at the Archewell Foundation she co-founded with Prince Harry. "I've read great things about you as a boss, and if you read the tabloids, you can read all sorts of crazy things about being a boss," he remarked, prompting Meghan to advise the columnist to steer clear of gossip.
"Well, first I would urge you not to read tabloids, because I don't think that that's healthy for anyone," she replied. "Hopefully, one day they come with a warning label like cigarettes do, like, 'This is toxic for your mental health.'"
Elsewhere in the conversation, Meghan spoke about "clickbait culture" how social media has changed the landscape of news.
"I think there is really legitimate media but at the moment, you see in many ways social media feeding into that so it becomes a race to the bottom," she said. "This clickbait culture has made it so that something that's salacious is more interesting and gets more pickup and can be monetized, so that ends up being the thing that feeds the entire environment of the media."
Meghan went on to explain that because news on social media is "so quick and rapid in how it's being delivered," certain parts of journalism have become "about creating the news rather than reporting the news."
She added, "The damaging effects of that specifically for women, and especially for young girls, is impossible to even quantify."
Not only has Meghan been critical of tabloids in the past, but she's also taken some of them to court. Earlier this year, a British judge ruled in Meghan's favor in a privacy and copyright infringement case involving five articles published by U.K.'s The Mail on Sunday in 2019 that included parts of a handwritten letter she had previously sent her father, Thomas Markle.
When asked about her feelings regarding the outlet's publishing company recent decision to file for an appeal during Tuesday's panel discussion, Meghan said she believes she "won the case."
"This issue frankly has been going on when I had no children at all, I now have two children as you know, so it's a arduous process but again it's me just standing up for what's right, which I think is important across the board," Meghan, who shares 2-year-old son Archie Harrison and 5-month-old daughter Lilibet Diana with Harry, said of the legal battle.
She said, "Be it in this case or in the other things we've been talking about today…if you know the difference between right and wrong, you must stand up for what's right and that's what I'm doing."