Rebel Wilson’s eye-watering record defamation payout of $4,567,472 will not only damage Bauer Media’s bottom line but will have an immediate impact on how celebrity gossip magazines operate in Australia, experts predict.

Expect less shock pregnancies, divorces and affairs to be gracing the cover of your local supermarket mag – unless the celebrity has confirmed their veracity first.



The Australian-born Hollywood star is not the first celebrity to sue the notorious supermarket mags. Bec Hewitt, the wife of tennis player Lleyton Hewitt, won a supreme court battle against New Idea over the source of a false story, although she decided not to sue for defamation. But Wilson is probably the first one prepared to risk ridicule and career damage by revealing just how hurtful the stories had been.

“She was willing to talk about her career being in the doldrums which feels like a high risk strategy,” says Tim Burrowes, publisher of media industry site Mumbrella. “You don’t necessarily want to be telling the public how badly your career is doing. A lot of people do take the view ‘never complain, never explain’.”

Stung by the fact that her hometown magazines had targeted her and perhaps aware of Australia’s tough defamation laws, Wilson played to win, taking on 40 stories which variously accused her of lying about her age, real name and childhood. She said she had lost roles because of the portrayal of her as a serial liar.

Bauer was so confident it couldn’t lose it chose not to pay a relatively small out-of-court settlement of $200,000. Now they must not only shell out millions – but reassess their entire publishing strategy for their already struggling magazines, Woman’s Day, Australian Women’s Weekly, New Weekly and OK!

Bauer has to wait to find out the full bill, with interest and costs yet to be determined.

Mark Pearson, professor of journalism and social media at Griffith University, believes the case will shake up an industry that trades on gossip. “As much as I’d prefer for free speech reasons that people didn’t sue media organisations, I think this sends a loud message to those trading in untrue gossip that there are legal avenues available to plaintiffs,” Pearson told Guardian Australia.

“While international celebrities may seem easy targets of false gossip under American law, these same celebrities can sue in Australia under much tougher defamation laws. And all of these celebrities do have a reputation in Australia, and some might feel they wish to defend it. This is especially the case with those with an Australian connection, with families and colleagues and the place where they most cherish their reputation.”

The global reach of the internet played its part too. In June a six-person jury found in favour of Wilson’s claim against the publisher of Woman’s Day and the Australian Women’s Weekly and in the supreme court in Melbourne on Wednesday, Justice John Dixon said Wilson’s suffering warranted a “substantial” payment. “The jury found each of the articles was defamatory, and rejected the defendants’ triviality defences,” the judge wrote in his judgment. “The sting was serious, likely to be injurious and understood as such by the defendants prior to publication. I do not accept that the articles were published for a local Australian audience. The internet cannot be so classified. ”

Wilson promised to give her windfall to charity. Among the responses yesterday was a commonly-expressed comparison of her windfall compared with the compensation ordinary people receive when they are victims of corporate greed or institutional abuse.

Bear no ill will to talented @RebelWilson, but damages fickle. Little kids traumatised for life by clergyabuse got tiny fraction of her$4.5m — Louise Milligan (@Milliganreports) September 13, 2017

Pearson, an expert in media law, said Australia didn’t have the toughest defamation laws but they are closer to the British system than the American one and celebrities could take advantage of that.

“The big difference is that for public figures like these, the American media can publish falsities about them as long as it can’t be proven that they acted with malice, that they went out to do a character assassination,” Pearson said.



“But in Australia it’s the reverse, if you damage someone’s reputation in Australia you have to have a defence of either public interest or something related to truth, which you have to prove.



“So salacious, false gossip is indefensible in Australia if you damage someone’s reputation. Despite any free speech values I might have I think it’s good that a message is sent against this trade that calls itself journalism but is far removed from fundamental journalism ethics.”

Andrew Mercado, a writer for Mediaweek, said the magazines had been “stretching the truth more than they used to” since the advent of the internet.

“They can’t get an exclusive anymore so they make something up,” Mercado said. “This will be a huge wake-up call to them all. Rebel knew those magazines and felt aggrieved that the local press was making up stuff about her. Those magazines are already starting to struggle, most people are waking up to the fact that they are full of fabrication. The writing is on the wall for them.”

“Clearly it sends a signal that there are consequences for telling stories you can’t prove to be true and of course for a long time the supermarket end of the market magazines have been willing to tell the most entertaining story rather then the most truthful,” Burrowes said.

Nene King, a former editor of Woman’s Day and the first female board member of Kerry Packer’s company Publishing and Broadcasting Limited, says the judgment is a game changer for the industry in 2017 and will make editors take stock.



“I would be very nervous if I was an editor today because I’d be thinking ‘who is going to turn up next’?”, says King, who writes a column for Pacific Magazines’ New Idea. “I think it will make the editors really think about not putting Nicole Kidman on the cover one week pregnant, then the next week breaking up with Keith Urban and then pregnant again in the third week.

“If I was still editing I would take a good hard look in which direction we would go with our news stories. It’s the news stories that are the killers. In my day the stories that we ran were true.”