Rebel Wilson 'outing' threat non-apology
Welcome to the Ratio, a bat signal for people being wrong on the internet.
A tweet and accompanying article by Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) editor Bevan Shields has received the ratio treatment because, well, it treated its audience like they were children who had not yet reached the Theory of Mind stage of development.
On Thursday, a SMH columnist Andrew Hornery emailed Rebel Wilson’s reps with questions about her same-sex relationship with Ramona Agruma. Before the given deadline, Wilson went public with the relationship on her Instagram. In response, Hornery complained about the way it all played out.
Considering how bitterly Wilson had complained about poor journalism standards when she successfully sued Woman’s Day for defamation, her choice to ignore our discreet, genuine and honest queries was, in our view, underwhelming.
After a backlash that went far beyond the usual Australian media drama into international circles, Shields decided to “offer the Herald’s view” after “reading this feedback closely.” Did he apologise? Obviously not, you are reading the Ratio after all.
His response had four prongs:
He led by pointedly saying the “article ran online and was a small item on page 36.” Just a teensie-tiny item in Australia’s most read newspaper and also on the World Wide Web, no biggie.
He emphasised how saying that“the Herald “outed” Wilson is wrong.” Quibbling whether the paper had outed Wilson because it had only intimated that it was going to (more on that in a sec) is a bit of a tough sell especially when Hornery’s piece began: “In a perfect world, “outing” same-sex celebrity relationships should be a redundant concept in 2022.”
He said that the column had treated Wilson’s new relationship exactly as if she was dating a man, a.k.a. the ‘I Can’t Be Racist, I’m Colour Blind’ defence.
Finally, Shields wrote that he had “made no decision” about whether they would publish or what they would publish.
The final point really gets to the crux of the issue. Journalists asking people for comment? Generally, pretty good. Forcibly outing someone (during Pride Month, no less, at a publication that infamously published the names of people arrested at the first Mardi Gras in the 1970s) is uh… frowned upon.
However, there is a little bit of grey in this story. Would they have published if Wilson’s had not responded or had asked them not to? What was the tone and content of the request for comment? It goes without saying that there are ways to respectfully confirm the details of a same-sex relationship. I don’t know how this request was carried out. Shields knows, but chose not to say.
Instead, he just put it out there that he had not yet made up his mind. The audience supposed to take his word for it and not have the curiosity to take this train of thought one step further. What would have happened? There’s no way we could ever know what would ever happen in such a farfetched premise or countenance what would happen inside someone’s mind. Move on.
Et voilà, our first ratio.
Shields: "on page 36"
It was also in the printed copy of The Age, where it appeared on page 18.