Sydney Morning Herald, Rebel Wilson, click bait journalism and privacy

June 13, 2022 |

The private lives of celebrities have always been the subject of fascination, and a source of coin for certain parts of the media.  Magazines such as New Idea, Women’s Day, Women’s Weekly spent big on photos of couples doing what couples do..up to a point.  That earned them good readership and lots of advertising revenue.  That the magazine trade has hit the cyber wall does not mean the appetite to know about the private lives of celebrities has dimmed.  Far from it.  If anything the demand is more voracious. 

The Nine newspapers more into covering the the rich, not so rich, the famous and the just pleasant to look at to keep readership up on line.  Click bait trumps everything. Hence the Culture/Celebrity/Private Sydney column.   

Which brings us to the Rebel Wilson, privacy and the Sydney Morning Herald’s tenuous connection to journalistic ethics. 

The Sydney Morning Herald thought it was onto something when it heard from friends and associates that Rebel WIlson was in a new relationship and then spied a social media post that the relationship was with another woman.  Or at least that it is what Andrew Hornery, of the SMH, says.  Given Rebel WIlson had supposedly identified as hetrosexual that makes for a story.  So Sydney Morning Herald emails Rebel with questions and she, no doubt with the advice of her PR team, take control of the story and announce, if that is the right word for it, the relationship. 

The Wilson camp think she was going to be “outed” while the SMH felt it had a right to ask a question.  It copped a social media firestorm and has done a mea culpa of sorts with I made mistakes over Rebel Wilson, and will learn from them.  It is yet another example of the outsize influence of campaigners on social media to affect many aspects of our lives and the mainstream media.  Some of it is for the good.  Often times it is frightening and a threat to a robust but respectful exchange of views.  Here the outcome is probably good but some of the social media commentary is over the top.

At its core this is all about privacy.  The right of Rebel Wilson to decide to show to world what relationship she is in or not to show to the world what relationship she is in.  Her relationship status has no bearing upon how the economy operates or national security.  The simpering apology by the SMH talks about how celebrities have a huge influence on our culture.  What does that mean?  If, in the case of Wilson, it talks about how they influence comedy then perhaps.  But as to their relationships, how does it hugely influence our culture?  The worst part of this burning wreckage of damage control is Andrew Hornery identifying himself as gay which supposedly gives him an insight into how “..I’m well aware of how deeply discrimination hurts.”  He was a nano particle away from standing next to Wilson and claiming the he too is a victim in all of this.  Gimme a break.  Even for a journalist that is rich.

At its core, a person is entitled to decide when or if he or she decides to make a relationship known.  A person’s private affairs is hardly ever a matter of public interest, as opposed to being of interest to the public. All of the wafferly justification by the SMH avoids that key point. 

I don’t care much about Rebel Wilson.  She is a hard working successful comedienne who is occasionally funny.  I do care about her privacy.  Unfortunately at the moment our laws provide her with no real protection in situations like this.  If it was France then the SMH would be in serious trouble.

The SMH apology is more about how it went about intruding on WIlson’s privacy rather than whether it should have done so.  It is a wretched piece of prose. 

The SMH grovel provides:

On the weekend I wrote about the background leading to Rebel Wilson’s social media post revealing her new relationship with another woman. I have learnt some new and difficult lessons from this and want to be upfront with you about the things I got wrong.

I genuinely regret that Rebel has found this hard. That was never my intention. But I see she has handled it all with extraordinary grace. As a gay man I’m well aware of how deeply discrimination hurts. The last thing I would ever want to do is inflict that pain on someone else.

Writing a weekly column about the personal lives of the rich, powerful and famous comes with its own unique set of challenges. A celebrity romance is a happy story. When I started hearing from friends and associates of Rebel that she was in a new relationship, as a gossip columnist I could see that was potentially a story, as her previous boyfriends had been.

So, after months of posts of the women together on Rebel’s Instagram account – from Oscars parties to Valentine’s Day, and most recently as VIP guests at the gay and lesbian World Pride Polo match in Florida – I assumed there was a good chance she might be happy to discuss it. She had already revealed a month ago that she had been dating and was very happy.

But we mishandled steps in our approach.

I was told by her management to put my questions in an email. Given I have a column every Saturday, I have a deadline and it is standard procedure to set out the timeframe. It is always up to the subject whether or how they want to engage.

At 9.27am last Thursday I wrote: “Good morning. I am a journalist from The Sydney Morning Herald and I was hoping I could get a comment from Rebel regarding her new relationship.

“While I realise Rebel’s partner has not been mentioned as yet, I have several sources who have confirmed their status and I have enough detail to publish.

“However, in the interests of transparency and fairness, before publishing I am reaching out to Rebel to see if she will engage in what I believe is a happy and unexpected news story for her, especially given the recent Pride celebrations.

“My deadline is Friday, 1pm Sydney-time. Regards, Andrew Hornery.”

Her response would have largely determined what I published and as my editor noted on Sunday, at that point no decisions had actually been made by the Herald’s editors on whether to publish anything.

I received no reply, which was entirely Rebel’s right.

In the early hours of Friday morning Sydney-time, Rebel posted on Instagram about finding her “Disney Princess”, Ramona Agruma, which I, along with the rest of the global media, wrote about.

My email was never intended to be a threat but to make it clear I was sufficiently confident with my information and to open a conversation.

It is not the Herald’s business to “out” people and that is not what we set out to do. But I understand why my email has been seen as a threat. The framing of it was a mistake.

The Herald and I will approach things differently from now on to make sure we always take into consideration the extra layer of complexities people face when it comes to their sexuality.

Celebrities have huge influence in our culture. We still have to ask questions, sometimes very difficult ones. It would be much worse to write gossip items about the unscripted events in their lives without them having a chance to have their say. But we need to make it clear that a deadline is not an ultimatum.

In trying to tell the story within the story, which is what Private Sydney does, the tone of my column on Saturday was also off. I got it wrong. I allowed my disappointment to cast a shadow over the piece. That was not fair and I apologise.

As a result, the Herald will take down Saturday’s column and replace it with this one.

Meanwhile over at the Australian the over reporting and gloating begins in fifth gear and stays there with Sydney Morning Herald retracts Rebel Wilson column amid criticism(which is a straight paraphrase of the SMH, to just short of plaigarism) and the Guardian covers much the same ground in a more sober way, with a lot more twitter commentary from activists and wannabe commentators with Rebel Wilson: Sydney Morning Herald removes column and apologises over reporting of actor’s new relationship.  Even the BBC can’t help but get in on the coverage, because it is a world wide story of public interest (!!) with Rebel Wilson: Australian paper offers apology but denies outing actress

It is not suprising that no media outlet really talked privacy or the need to respect it or give it proper protections.  The complaint is more about tactics. 

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