Sydney Morning Herald retracts Rebel Wilson column amid criticism
Nine Entertainment’s celebrity columnist Andrew Horney now says he ‘mishandled’ a story about the Australian actress and her new relationship with a woman.
The Sydney Morning Herald has removed a controversial column reporting on Rebel Wilson’s relationship with a woman and replaced it with an apology to the Australian actress.
The retraction of the piece comes less than 24 hours after Herald editor Bevan Shields sought to explain why his masthead had published the piece authored by celebrity columnist Andrew Hornery on Saturday.
In the piece published by the Herald on Monday, Hornery wrote that he “got it wrong”, adding: “I genuinely regret Rebel has found this hard” and that he had “mishandled steps” in his approach to the story. “A celebrity romance is a happy story. When I started hearing from friends and associates of Rebel that she was in a new relationship, as a gossip columnist I could see that was potentially a story, as her previous boyfriends had been,” Hornery wrote.
“So, after months of posts of the women together on Rebel’s Instagram account – from Oscars parties to Valentine’s Day, and most recently as VIP guests at the gay and lesbian World Pride Polo match in Florida – I assumed there was a good chance she might be happy to discuss it.”
Hornery told readers on the weekend that he had contacted Wilson, giving her two days to comment on her relationship with Ramona Agruma. Wilson, ahead of that deadline, revealed her relationship with Agruma, writing on Instagram: “I thought I was searching for a Disney Prince … but maybe what I really needed all this time was a Disney Princess.”
On Monday, Hornery said his attempts to contact Wilson were “never intended to be a threat”, noting it was “not the Herald’s business to ‘out’ people” and reveal the actress’ same-sex relationship.
Shields, one day earlier, had written a separate note to readers in which he described suggestions the paper had “outed” Wilson as “wrong”. “Wilson made the decision to publicly disclose her new partner, who had been a feature of her social media accounts for months,” Shields wrote.
Shields and the Herald’s executive editor Tory Maguire declined a request for comment.
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Opinion: I made mistakes over Rebel Wilson, and will learn from them | Andrew Hornery https://t.co/C0UhdbYaW2
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