Ex-Cleo editor Lisa Wilkinson unloads on ‘trashy’ magazine industry

The Project co-host Lisa Wilkinson has criticised magazine publications for publishing misleading stories about her.

Lisa Wilkinson has hit out at magazine publications for publishing misleading stories about her. Picture: Channel 10

Television host and former magazine editor Lisa Wilkinson has attacked the industry she spent decades working in, slamming the “trashy gossip” published by certain magazines and websites as “part of a system to weaken and suppress women”.

Speaking at a networking breakfast in Melbourne on Tuesday to promote her 2021 autobiography, Wilkinson recounted to the 500-strong crowd how she was made editor of Dolly magazine at just 21.

But she told the crowd that she now views the women’s magazine industry as a shameful sector which “brings out the worst in human nature”.

“Every time we pick up one of those magazines in a doctor’s waiting room and every time we click on that salacious link to a trashy gossip website, not believing the ridiculous emotion-charged headline but clicking on that link nonetheless, a click means you like it, so it only brings more of it,” Wilkinson told the audience at Melbourne’s Crown Casino.

“In these faces women exist only to be ogled at, picked on, ridiculed, pitted against each other, laughed at or scorned; it’s designed to make us feel better if we are having a bad day, but it doesn’t, it makes us feels worse, and it simply brings out the worst in human nature.

“It’s part of a system to weaken and suppress women and we’ve been witnessing it for decades.”

She also used another example of women being unfairly treated by the media.

“Kate Middleton touching her baby bump? ‘Maternal’ Meghan Markle touching hers? ‘Attention seeking’,” Wilkinson said.

The 62-year-old media veteran, who co-hosts Ten’s The Project, also hit out at a recent story published online which ran a photograph of her eating a meal by herself in a Melbourne hotel.

Mocking the story, Wilkinson said: “And apparently if you’ve read any of the trashy media gossip over the last few months I’m also a craven, shameless media whore who has the temerity to eat dinner and sip on a margarita on her own while on a business trip to Melbourne — very possibly without even checking with her husband first.”

Wilkinson also criticised Prime Minister Scott Morrison for his involvement in the departure of former Australia Post chief executive Christine Holgate in 2020.

“Scott Morrison publicly attacked a highly-regarded and demonstrably successful female CEO under parliamentary privilege for doing what every male in the same role had done for decades, rewarding high-achieving staff,” she said.

“She had to leave the job she loved, he never apologised.”

Wilkinson also quashed any rumours that she didn’t get along with her on-air colleague Carrie Bickmore.

“Given I’m in this mode of setting the record straight, here’s some other things I’d love you to know about me,” she said.

“I love Carrie Bickmore. I get on extremely well with Karl’s ex-wife. (Former Today colleague) Sylvia Jeffreys and I are still great mates.

“I am not negotiating to go into breakfast radio. None of the salary figures you’ve ever seen attached to my name in the press have ever been correct.”

Wilkinson’s book was published by HarperCollins last year and attracted much criticism after elements of her it were criticised for not being accurate, including her recollections of her final day on Nine’s Today show before she was sacked in 2017.