A perceived threat to “out” actor Rebel Wilson was “likely to cause substantial offence and distress”, the Australian Press Council has found.
Earlier this month the Australian comedian and actor said she believed Sydney Morning Herald gossip columnist Andrew Hornery was “threatening” to out her when he contacted her about her same-sex relationship with Los Angeles designer Ramona Agruma and gave her two days to respond.
Before Hornery could break the story, Wilson announced the relationship on Instagram in June.
After Wilson went public, Hornery wrote an article (which has since been deleted) saying Wilson had “opted to gazump the story”. “Big mistake,” he wrote, as he explained how he missed out on the big scoop.
That article prompted a “swift and brutal” global backlash, including from Whoopi Goldberg on The View, and in the New York Times.
In a ruling published on the Herald’s website on Saturday, the council noted that the Herald had conceded it breached the council’s principles, and that it had retracted the article and replaced it with a “prominent apology” along with an editor’s apology.
“The tenor of the publication’s communications with Ms Wilson concerning a deeply personal matter, and the associated commentary on a matter which had no apparent connection to her public activities, intruded on her reasonable expectations of privacy,” the council said in a statement.
“The council considers that, taken collectively, the article’s reference to ‘outing’ same-sex celebrity couples, its reference to giving Ms Wilson two days to respond to information concerning her relationship, and its forthright criticism of her for not responding, was likely to cause substantial offence and distress.”
The council found there was not enough public interest to justify the intrusion and that the Herald had breached general principle five (avoid intruding on a person’s reasonable expectations of privacy, unless doing so is sufficiently in the public interest) and six (avoid causing or contributing materially to substantial offence, distress or prejudice, or a substantial risk to health or safety, unless doing so is sufficiently in the public interest).
At the time, the Herald issued an initial defence of the process, then two apologies after that first reaction was roundly criticised both within the paper and more broadly.
“oh we just ask the questions..”
— Raf Epstein (@Raf_Epstein) June 12, 2022
What exactly do you think she would have thought when you asked the questions?
Disingenuous
Low rent behaviour
How would these journalists and editors feel if these questions were asked about their private life? pic.twitter.com/9MivpB1E1L
“I just thought it was kind of grubby behaviour,” Wilson told the Australian earlier this month.
“Basically, with the situation where a journalist is threatening to out you, you’ve got to hurry, and some people we didn’t get a chance to tell before it came out publicly. And that’s not ideal.”
