Comment from Peter Saxon
By her own admission, for a celebrity, Chrissie Swan leads a fairly ordinary life. She didn’t think she was controversial enough for a paparazzo to be assigned to follow her. But last week one did, and sprung the Mix 101.1 breakfast co-host smoking while pregnant.
A generation or so ago, when the BBC’s Jimmy Savile and Hey Dad star Robert Hughes were allegedly touching up under age girls with impunity, you could get away with smoking too. No one would have paid $55,000 for a photo of you lighting up – unless you were a page three girl in bed with a politician at the time.
Yet, in a scandal-laden news week, even the affairs of Craig Thomson, Eddie Obeid and the ‘doping in sports’ bombshell have failed to distract the media from Chrissie’s case.
This, despite the fact that the (admittedly unscientific) reader poll in Fairfax online, which usually tends to crucify the subject, instead let Chrissie off the hook by 75% to 25%, voting NO to the question, Do you think it’s anyone else’s business if Chrissie Swan smoked during her pregnancy?
Evidently, at 25% there’s enough “public interest” in the story for Woman’s Day to justify stumping up the price of a small Mercedes to out-bid Chrissie herself for a photo of her taking a drag from a cigarette.
Chrissie Swan has told her Mix 101.1 listeners and Fairfax readers that she was trying to “protect” her children by bidding as high as $53,000 to buy the damning photos of her smoking so she can bury them.
I can see her point. Okay, she’s been outed. The story’s been all over the media. By next week, the caravan will have moved on. No real harm done. Her kids, still babies, should be none the wiser.
But the photos, once published, will find their way online where, like toxic waste, they’ll be around forever. What parent wanting to admonish their children not to smoke would want to be made a hypocrite by an indiscretion made years before?
But hey, the public has a right to know and Woman’s Day has magazines to sell. Meanwhile, the public already knows, and Chrissies’s owned up to it. So how will a picture add to the facts already known? Here’s a picture of Chrissie. Here’s a picture of a cigarette. It’s not hard to create your own image of the former puffing on the latter. Now imagine what would happen if by the time Woman’s Day publishes the pics, nobody cares?
It is not my intention to put the black hat on the paparazzi and their clients while reserving the white for radio. On top of traditional media ready to exploit their audience’s love of leaping to armchair judgment, social media lets anyone with keyboard and internet connection vent their spleen and cut down tall poppies. Those who choose to make a living in the public arena must realise that they are fair game, even if that seems unfair.
The only thing that celebrities and the radio stations that employ them can do is get used to it and prepare for as many contingencies as possible.
Whether by good fortune or hard nosed design Chrissie and her minders have played this pretty well. She’s come out quickly with a tearful apology, blaming no one but herself. She’s shown us she’s getting professional help and is using her celebrity to get others to contact the Quit line.
In her own words, “I have had the kind of week I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy but, ultimately, it’s been positive because I have asked for help, I have stopped smoking and I feel peaceful and authentic and truthful.”
After a terrible week last week, this episode has probably done her profile more good than harm with most people seeing her as the victim of a cruel paparazzi cashing in on human frailty.
If nothing else, it’s certainly given her some great new material for her radio show and her TV show, Can of Worms. At time of writing Ten was already promoting the next show with the question, Is it ever okay to keep a secret from a loved one?
My prediction is that when the show airs tonight at 8:30, it will see a spike in audience. And it won’t hurt her breakfast show with Jane Hall on Melbourne’s Mix 101.1 either.
Peter Saxon