'It was never meant to be journalism': why did the Press Council take on Woman's Day?

It’s an open secret in the gossip magazine industry that many of the stories are made up, or at least highly exaggerated.

Celebrities are increasingly vocal about the practice, with some, such as Rebel Wilson, taking legal action and others, such as the Sunrise co-host Samantha Armytage, calling them out for falsehoods.

Armytage, a popular target of the magazines, said last year the so-called sources they quoted were “made up”. “There’s a special place in hell for people who work at Woman’s Day,” she said on social media.

Related: Woman's Day headline declaring Meghan and Harry's marriage over 'blatantly incorrect'

With standards such as these it came as a shock when Woman’s Day was rapped over the knuckles by the media watchdog last week for publishing a headline about Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, which it said was “blatantly incorrect”.

Dr Megan Le Masurier, a media academic from the University of Sydney, says when she saw the reports she was stumped.

“When I read this story I just thought you could pick any copy of New Idea or Woman’s Day any week and they are doing headlines like this,” Le Masurier, a former ACP magazine editor herself, says.

“This is not journalism; it was never meant to be journalism. And I’ve got a term for it: ‘fabulous reportage’.

“The way it works is they get the pictures in and then they make shit up. It’s just fantasy and all they’re trying to do is get clicks or sales in a dying market.”

So why did the press council, which usually takes aim at articles in the Herald Sun or the Sydney Morning Herald, sit in judgment of a Woman’s Day cover story which said the royal family had confirmed Prince Harry and his wife Meghan’s marriage was over?

The short answer is someone – not the royal family – complained about the article, and the council saw merit in the complaint and investigated because the magazine’s owner, Bauer Media, is a member of the press council.

According to the latest annual report only 10 out of a total of 669 complaints to the Australian Press Council related to magazines – and that’s all magazines, not just light entertainment or gossip magazines, which explains why these types of adjudications are rare.

The ruling also revealed the council does not treat all publications under its self-regulatory watch the same – even though they are all subject to the same standards of practice.

The council’s ruling, although it found the publication was in breach of standards for accuracy also signalled it’s OK – even expected – for these supermarket mags to “exaggerate”. The council said that “not necessarily” everything has to be “factual” when it comes to a light entertainment magazine.

Related: News Corp asylum seeker cartoon 'prejudicial' but in public interest, press council says

We ask the council why these magazines are not held to the same factual standards as other print and online media if all members are subject to the same press council standards.

“Celebrity and gossip magazines are purchased for light entertainment, with readers not necessarily assuming that everything presented is factual,” a spokesman says.

“Accordingly, some latitude is given for factual exaggeration and inaccuracies in publications of this kind and whether statements are really ‘factual material’.”

The council also gives special consideration to stories about royalty or celebrities, which can, “depending on the circumstances, be different to those required in respect of other persons, particularly those who are not usually in the public eye”.

“I thought what’s the press council doing?” Le Masurier says. “I actually love these magazines when I come across one because I find them really funny.

“But the finding is a misunderstanding of the genre of the gossip magazines.

“I think if the headline is blatantly untrue, find me something that’s blatantly true. They don’t deal in truth. But I think the people who read it get the joke. If the Herald had a headline like that sure haul them over the coals, but a magazine like this is different. I don’t think it can be assessed as journalism.”

As one of Bauer Media Group’s Australian properties, the magazine is subject to the standards of the press council, a voluntary membership which the German company inherited when it bought Australian Consolidated Press in 2012.

Along with most of the major print outlets such as Nine, Private Media, AAP, Schwartz Media and Daily Mail Australia, Bauer’s publications must adhere to the standards set by the council, which broadly cover accuracy, fairness, privacy, avoidance of harm, integrity and transparency.

Woman’s Day rival New Idea is not a member, as owner Seven West Media set up its own watchdog The Independent Media Council in 2012 to hear complaints about all its publications.

New Idea found itself in court when Bec and Lleyton Hewitt demanded to know who the source was for a story headlined “Bec’s Other Man” that claimed she was spending lots of time with a hunky American fitness trainer. The man turned out to be Bec Hewitt’s brother.

The editor of Woman’s Day, Fiona Connolly, who declined an interview, has described the magazine as the “ultimate escape from the daily grind for our readers” and said the royals are key to the success of the magazine.

When asked by the council for an explanation about the headline, the magazine said “weekly celebrity publications provide light entertainment and that readers of those publications understand this is the case. It said it would be unreasonable to hold such publications to a standard similar to that of other news media.”

It also said that “given the entertainment focus of such magazines, readers expect a level of exaggeration in cover lines and headlines” and “a similar complaint could be made of almost every issue of every celebrity weekly publication and click-bait headlines which are common within the digital news media”.

Some celebrities seek legal redress, like Wilson and Hewitt, but others, such as radio broadcaster Chrissy Swan, take their complaints to the council.

In 2018 Swan complained about an article in Woman’s Day that featured her taking her children to McDonald’s and the council found the magazine had breached her privacy and “was likely to cause substantial distress to the family”.

Le Masurier says in terms of journalistic ethics the magazines are almost always in breach, but the readers don’t read them for truth. “They read them for pleasure, to have a giggle at the hairdressers,” she says.

“What they do is they take the model of a news story and then make fun of it. There is so rarely a person quoted; it’s usually an anonymous source. I used to work at ACP on different magazines and it was well known that they had fun making things up.

“On certain weeks the different covers would be contradictory. I think the readers know that. It’s like reality TV is not real and we all know that.”