And “ultimatum”, that’s what the Sydney Morning Herald is accused of posing for Australian actress Rebel Wilson to reveal his homosexuality. On June 9, Andrew Hornery, a society columnist for the reputable Sydney newspaper, sent an email to the actress of Pitch Perfect. He warns her that he intends to reveal, in an article to be published on June 11, the name of his companion and asks her if she wishes to comment on the information.
Wilson had never revealed his homosexuality before. The actress chooses not to respond to the Australian journalist and posts a photo of herself with her partner the same day on Instagram, formalizing her coming out and thus ahead of the Herald. In response, Andrew Hornery publishes an article on June 11 in which he complains, in essence, of having had his scoop stolen.
It’s my fault Sydney Morning Herald
Still, for many, the journalist did indeed impose a “coming out forcé”. A wave of outrage followed on social media. Many personalities react to condemn the words of the journalist, qualifying his article as “scandalous”, “repulsive” et “ashamed”, enumerate the Los Angeles Times. Among them, Irish singer Ronan Keating or the BBC journalist Megha Mohan, who judges the methods of the newspaper close to those of the “trash press” of the 1990s.
Today, Andrew Hornery’s original column is no longer online. It was replaced on the site of the Sydney Morning Herald by a tribune of apology entitled “I made a mistake with Rebel Wilson, and I won’t do it again.” The journalist defends himself and says he did not want to hurt the actress. “As a gay man, I am aware of the ravages of discrimination. It really wasn’t my intention to hurt him.” he writes.
He then explains that the newspaper teams have “clumsy summer”, and that contacting Rebel Wilson to warn her that they were going to reveal her relationship was right “a matter of transparency and fairness”, and in no case “an ultimatum”. He concludes :
“We don’t make money by revealing the homosexuality of stars and that’s not what we’re about. But I can understand why this email was interpreted as a threat. The wording was probably to blame.”
“Bullying is not journalism”
The coming out of the actress has aroused a lot of hatred towards her on social networks, deplores for her part The Independent. The revelation turned into “an explosive cocktail of dubious jokes, biphobia and denunciations”, writes the British newspaper. The actress also revealed that “it was very hard” on his Twitter account.
If, as journalist Andrew Hornery admits, “running a weekly celebrity privacy column has many pitfalls”, writing about the private lives of LGBTQI celebrities can be perceived as even more intrusive and violent, especially when they do not wish to speak publicly on the subject. While Bevan Shields – its editor – asserts in a note published by the Herald that the newspaper would have proceeded in the same way if the partner of Rebel Wilson had been a man, Nicky Bath, director of the association LGBTIQ + Health Australia, quoted by the British daily The Guardian, explains that it is not the same thing:
“While society thinks ‘everything is fine’ for LGBTQI people, the reality is that homophobia still has a bright future ahead of it in Australia.”
In the same spirit, Ines Braga Sampaio, sports journalist at Portuguese radio Rádio Renascença, recalls on her Twitter account that “June is a good month [celui des marches des fiertés] so as not to forget that we, the media, must do even better in our coverage of the LGBTQI community. Harassment is not journalism.”