The Sydney Morning Herald’s (SMH) column about actress Rebel Wilson’s same-sex relationship caused her “substantial offence and distress” and breached the Australian Press Council's (APC) Standards of Practice.
Wilson believed the newspaper's gossip columnist Andrew Hornery was “threatening” to out her when he contacted her about her relationship with Los Angeles designer Ramona Agruma, and gave her two days to respond.
Before Hornery could break the story, Wilson announced the relationship on Instagram in June 2022.
After the Australian actor and comedian went public, Hornery wrote an article, which has since been deleted, saying Wilson had “opted to gazump the story”.
Hornery wrote this was a "big mistake" and her choice to ignore his query was "underwhelming".
He was met with fierce backlash online, with people noting Wilson may not have chosen to announce the relationship if it had not been for Hornery's deadline.
On October 29, the APC deemed in a ruling on its website that the outlet breached two of its general principles, including:
- Avoiding intruding on a person’s reasonable expectations of privacy, unless doing so is sufficiently in the public interest
- Avoiding causing or contributing materially to substantial offence, distress or prejudice, or a substantial risk to health or safety, unless doing so is sufficiently in the public interest
APC said in its adjudication that while Wilson is a public figure and her reasonable expectations of privacy may be intruded out of public interest, the SMH's commentary on her relationship “had no apparent connection to her public activities”.
The ruling was also published on the SMH's website on Saturday, in which the council noted that the SMH had retracted the article and replaced it with a “prominent apology” along with an editor’s apology.
A day after the ruling, Wilson posted a photo of her and Agruma to Instagram.
In her caption, she addressed the council condemning the outlet's "grubby behaviour" in trying to "out" her same-sex relationship.
Wilson said while she did not "personally ask for any action to be taken", she is "glad that this has been officially recorded and recognised".
"Their actions did cause Ramona and I a lot of distress," she said.
"There are still pains from having to rush this news publicly, which we are dealing with."
