When journalist Kate Doak’s tweet came through on Saturday morning, criticising the decision of The Sydney Morning Herald to “out” Rebel Wilson’s new partner as a woman, I couldn’t make sense of the story.
It’s 2022 for heaven’s sake! Who cares who Wilson – or any celebrity – chooses to love or date? And then to have the temerity, as gossip columnist Andrew Hornery did, to complain about being gazumped when Wilson decided to do the honours herself. Baffling.
Is the media ever justified in outing a public person’s private life? In my view, in just one situation. When the public figure — celebrity or politician — is living a life that contradicts their public actions or proclamations. If any anti-gay politician is snapped in a gay bar, that’s in the public interest. Ditto if a celebrity who uses her influence to oppose abortion is discovered to have had one.
Wilson is not guilty of such hypocrisies, which means there was no justification for the SMH to publicise her private life.
Of course, this is what celebrity gossip columnists do, publicise the private lives of public figures. Not because it’s in the public interest, but because the public is interested. Indeed, that’s how the SMH justified its decision. By suggesting that Wilson was getting the same paparazzi treatment as any other celebrity, which in this day and age was justified because in 2022 “love is love”.
Yet at the same time, the paper acknowledged that gay relationships are different. Which was why from an “abundance of caution and respect” it gave Wilson two days to comment.
Which is where I call bullshit. If Andrew Hornery and his editor Bevan Shields were really concerned that exposing Wilson’s relationship was “outing her”, how did the two-day comment period throw her a lifeline? All it did was give her the one option she eventually took — to out herself, a decision for which Hornery castigated her in the piece that has now been taken down and for which Hornery has apologised and said he has learnt lessons from.
As gay ABC Radio National broadcaster Patricia Karvelas put it: “I don’t believe in outing … [because] it’s dangerous.”
It’s dangerous because whether you’re outing someone for being gay, having premarital sex or dating someone of a different religion, you’re exposing something about a private life that they’d chosen to keep hidden. And while the risks this brings may not apply to most of us, that doesn’t mean they aren’t real for that person.
Risks related to churchgoing relatives, children in less-than-progressive schools or old-world relatives who believe in honour killings. Risks that, should they fall on the downside, will redound solely to the detriment of that person’s life, which is why decisions about if and when to take them belong solely to that person.
And are none of our damn business.
Well said. SMH article was dangerous gutter ‘journalism’.
Like the Lolstralian, the Age and the SMH are no longer actual newspapers.
Did it even publish the election returns this time?
If so, I missed it.
Traditionally that was the biggest selling edition once the rivers of gold dried up on Saturdays.
C’mon Crikey: Three (three for god’s sake!) stories about how Nine/SMH – journalism in general – err, the whole world – is about to crash because of a silly sequence of events by a pushy journo and a P-plate editor.
Along the way some accidental revelations about the writers and their Chrikey editors – all looking so po-faced and calling for smelling salts like a group of easily-shocked Victorian spinsters.
One is the urge to unnecessarily identify anyone as (golly gosh!) gay. I don’t care that the excellent PK may be. Her opinion stands, whatever.
Sit down, calm down, write about what matters.
The “excellent PK” obviously has a fan base on Crikey, which is interesting. If you Google “Patricia Karvelas + Larissa Behrendt” it is not a good look.
To be clear I am pro-choice in alI circumstances, but I do take issue with the outing of an abortion. That is a fundamentally private issue. It is never acceptable to out someone. There could be a very good reason why a person wishes to keep that to themselves, regardless of who they are and what they may advocate. No-one ever outs the putative father.
I take issue with the outing of gay people too. I think an exception can be made there with respect to the ‘anti-gay’ politician
who is outed, but that is where I draw the line.
Why is Patricia Karvelas described as “gay abc broadcaster” in the article. She is an ABC broadcaster. If her being gay is relevant it should not be added to her title. Sloppy.
I adore Rebel Wilson and wish her the best – she is fabbo.
Agree. A good article, but whether Karvelas prefers boys, girls or badgers is completely irrelevant.
Erm…she’s described as that because that is literally what she says in her tweet, and she says it because she is being singled out as a person in the media known to be gay and asked to make comment. I think that’s pretty clear in the context of the article.
She never shuts up about her proclivities but her most irritating trait is the constant ”I, ME, MINE!” which clogs her verbiage.
Those words really should be surgically removed.
They chose to continue the race to the bottom previously led by the Murdoch press.
All true.
But before anyone else cites Patricia Karvelas on journalistic ethics, they might like to go back through Crikey’s back files and read Rundle: anatomy of a Larissa Behrendt beat-up (crikey.com.au)
I’ve never understood the love in for Patricia Karvelis. She comes across as very light on in her interviews, often asking meaningless questions.