Karl Stefanovic’s bizarre PR backtrack after blistering on-air takedown

Less than three years after delivering a brutal on-air takedown, Karl Stefanovic has made a truly baffling PR move.

Karl Stefanovic has given a wide-ranging interview to an outlet he once described as having a “despicable track record” and begged viewers not to read, as he continues the PR blitz surrounding his return to the Today show.

The Today host happily gushed over his relationship with wife Jasmine Yarbrough and their excitement over the impending birth of their daughter next month in a new in-depth, three-part interview with the Daily Mail.

But in June 2017, Stefanovic, 45, delivered a blistering on-air takedown of that same publication and begged Today viewers to “never go to that website” after it published pictures of him checking into a country NSW caravan park with a female colleague, with whom he was working on a story.

The article showed pictures of the Nine presenter entering the Yamba premises clutching two six-packs of rum. He was accompanied by a female colleague and the article pointed out that then-girlfriend Yarbrough, was “nowhere to be seen.”

The article that sparked Stefanovic’s fury.

At the time, Stefanovic addressed the article directly with a scathing tirade, in which he begged viewers not to read the Daily Mail.

“How would you feel if I judged you for what you’re wearing this morning. How would you feel if I criticised your hair, or mocked your make-up or shamed you for not wearing any?” he asked.

“I want to take a couple of minutes right now to call out an organisation that trades in these kind of insults. It’s a news website which seeks to profit from criticising and publicly humiliating people — women especially,” he said.

“The sleazy suggestion we are checking in somewhere and that I’m ‘settling in for a long night.’ Fact: this was work. We were filming a story about our struggling prawn farmers; they deserve a rum or two. The producer pictured on the website is a committed, talented, hardworking and totally professional young woman and not deserving of this cheap, lazy, sexist online slur.”

He referred to the site as “Hate Mail”.

Stefanovic continued: “The idea that colleagues of the opposite sex cannot work together without something going on surely belongs to the 1950s. The Daily Mail has a long, despicable track record of denigrating women, of ridiculing women and objectifying women.”

He then reeled off examples of Daily Mail coverage of his then-Today colleagues Lisa Wilkinson and Sylvia Jeffreys, and the outlet’s infamous Samantha Armytage ‘granny panties’ post that ended with an apology from the Mail.

“This is the same site that ridiculed Lisa for wearing the same blouse four months apart, the same site that tried to suggest that Lisa and Sylvia couldn’t work together, presumably because they are both women. The same site that tried to shame Sunrise host Samantha Armytage for wearing so-called ‘granny pants’.”

“I am over it. I don’t know what you think, but I hope Australia is over it as well. Go hard on me, make up your stories, publish your lies and send out the paps. But if you have any care whatever for the women of Australia, do not slur the reputations of others in your eagerness to throw mud at me. If you agree with me, the best thing that you can do is never go to that website.”

"Do not slur the reputations of others in your eagerness to throw mud at me." -@KarlStefanovic #9Today pic.twitter.com/v0G7xSBlmu

— The Today Show (@TheTodayShow) June 1, 2017

Less than three years later, and as Today battles to climb the ratings against rival Sunrise, Stefanovic gave a wide-ranging interview to that same outlet, gushing about falling in love with Yarbrough and discussing preparations for the birth of their first child together.

“I think there’s a light about her and a loyalty and an inner beauty – that was the biggest attraction for me,” he told the publication.

“And she’s beautifully loyal to her friends and her family. She’s just a great Queensland girl and I’m very, very lucky … We do have a very loving relationship and to have a baby as an expression of that love is incredible.”

The couple are expecting their first child together.

Yarbrough and Stefanovic will welcome a baby girl next month – her first child, and her husband’s fourth. Stefanovic is already father to Jackson, 20, Ava, 15, and River, 13 – but said this time around, he’ll have a different approach.

“It’s obviously going to be different. I’m going to be a bit slower but I think slower might be a good thing,” he told the outlet.

“I’m not in such a hurry to go somewhere else and I’m not chasing the yarns overseas like I was when I was building up to this point in my career.

“And I don’t think that’s any great sleight on me as a father – it’s just the way things were. As a family we were working towards other things but you are busy in your 20s and 30s. You’re providing for your family every step of the way.

“You’re pretty busy making your way and you don’t stop to smell the roses sometimes but that’s the way it is.”

The new comments on his life with Yarbrough follow Stefanovic’s recent interview with Stellar magazine, where he set the record straight on salacious reports surrounding the breakdown of his first marriage.

“She’s (Jasmine’s) been through so much. She’s been pilloried and accused of things that didn’t happen,” Stefanovic told the magazine.

“It’s not her fault she fell in love with bugalugs, and the accusations were wrong about her stealing me from Cassandra.

“It’s rubbish and it’s hurtful.”

Stefanovic and Thorburn at the 2011 Logies.