Gossip column

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A gossip column is a newspaper or magazine article written in a light, informal style, which relates the column author’s personal opinions about the personal lives or conduct of movie, television, and pop music celebrities, famous athletes, politicians, and other members of society’s elite, and relates entertaining, sensational, or potentially scandalous innuendos, rumours, and "scuttlebutt" about these individuals. While gossip columns in mainstream newspapers and magazines are often tamer in their content than lurid, ‘tell-all’ tabloids, columns are nevertheless full of innuendo about celebrities’ purported sexual practices, drug use, and alleged criminal behavior.

Gossip columns have a reciprochal relationship with the celebrities whose private lives are splashed about in the gossip column's pages. Gossip columns can engage in borderline defamatory conduct, spreading innuendo about alleged immoral or illegal conduct that can injure celebrities' reputations. Yet at the same time, gossip columns are also an important part of the "Star System" publicity machine that turns movie actors and musicians into celebrities, that are the objects of the public's obsessive attention and interest. The publicity agents of celebrities often provide or "leak" information or rumors to gossip columnists to publicize the celebrity or their projects, or to counteract "bad press" that has recently surfaced about their conduct.

[edit] Libel and defamation

While gossip columns’ “bread and butter” is rumor, innuendo, and allegations of scandalous behavior, there is a fine line between legally-acceptable spreading of innuendo and rumor and the making of defamatory statements, which can provoke a lawsuit. Newspapers and magazine editorial policies normally require gossip columnists to have a source for all of their allegations, in order to protect the publisher against lawsuits for defamation.

Celebrities or public figures whose private lives are revealed in gossip columns who believe that their reputation has been defamed–that is, exposed to hatred, contempt, ridicule, or pecuniary loss can sue for libel. A gossip columnist cannot defend themselves from a libel claim by arguing that they merely repeated but did not originate the defamating rumor or claim; instead, the columnist has to prove that the allegedly defaming statement was truthful, or that it was based on a reasonably reliable source.

In the mid-1960s, Supreme Court rulings in the US made it harder for the media to be sued for libel. The court ruled that libel only occurred in cases where a publication prints falsehoods about a celebrity with “reckless disregard” for the truth. A celebrity suing a newspaper for libel must now prove that the paper published the falsehood with actual malice or with deliberate knowledge that the statement was both incorrect and defamatory.

Moreover, the court ruled that only factual misrepresentation is libel, not expression of opinion. Thus if a gossip columnist writes that they “...think that Celebrity X is an idiot,” the columnist does not face a risk of being sued for libel. On the other hand, if the columnist invents an allegation that “...Celebrity X is a wife beater,” with no supporting source or evidence, the celebrity can sue for libel on the grounds that their reputation was defamed.

[edit] History

In Hollywood's "golden age", in the 1930s and 1940s, the gossip column was used by the studios as a powerful publicity tool. During this period, the major movie studios had "stables" of contractually-obligated actors, and the studios controlled nearly all aspects of the lives of their movie stars. From the 1930s through the 1950s, the two best-known - and competing - Hollywood gossip columnists were Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons.

Well-timed "leaks" about the star's purported romantic adventures helped the studios to create and sustain the public's interest in the studios' star actors. As well, the movie studios' publicity agents acted as unnamed "well-informed inside sources" who provided misinformation and rumours to counteract whispers about celebrity secrets, such as homosexuality or an out-of-wedlock child, that could have severely damaged not only the reputation of the movie star in question, but the movie star's box office viability.

Having fallen into ill-repute after the heyday of Hopper and Parsons, the gossip column saw a comeback in the 1980s. Today, many reputable magazines such as Time which would once have considered the idea of publishing a gossip column to have been beneath their stature, are including gossip columns. Titled "People" or "Entertainment", these mainstream gossip columns provide a light, chatty glimpse into the private lives and misadventures of the rich and famous. On the lower end of the journalism spectrum, there are entire publications that deal primarily in gossip, rumor, and innuendo about celebrities, such as tabloids and celebrity 'tell-all' magazines.