Daily Mail accused of ruining viewing plans of Bachelorette fans by publishing apparent spoiler
The Bachelorette has brought ‘spark’ back to TV says Blackley
The Daily Mail is tonight facing a growing online backlash after publishing a prominent news story which appears to have given away the winner of tonight’s finale of The Bachelorette.
(This report does not contain spoilers)
The Bachelorette has been one of Ten’s best performing shows of the year, while Daily Mail Australia is allied to rival network Nine.
The story – which features at the top of the Daily Mail home page. They show Bachelorette Sam Frost in the arms of one of the final two contestants.
The series finale was filmed some time ago, meaning the image strongly suggests that Frost is in a relationship with the person in the images.
Unusually for a news story containing a spoiler about a TV show yet to air, there was no warning to readers, and there was no effort to hide the information until somebody had chosen to click through from the home page.
The images appear to have been taken using a long lens camera. The article says they were taken of the couple “canoodling” in a hotel room at The Darling Hotel in Sydney close to Ten’s Sydney headquarters.
According to News Corp Australia’s national TV writer Shannon Molloy, the hotel room was around ten floors up.
Unless the couple cooperated with the pictures, the use of the image may be a breach of the Press Council’s statement of principles around privacy. The principles state that publishers should “avoid intruding on a person’s reasonable expectations of privacy, unless doing so is sufficiently in the public interest”.
Daily Mail Australia signed up to the Press Council less than two months ago.
The Daily Mail quickly began to trend on Twitter, with viewers accusing the website of ruining their evening’s plans. Unmoderated comments on the Daily Mail website were also highly critical.
Ten declined to comment on the publication of the photos, ahead of tonight’s finale, while The Daily Mail has also been approached for comment but has not yet responded.
Tim Burrowes and Nic Christensen
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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There’s no privacy breach here, it’s a reality television program with a photographer on the other side of the curtains doing a photo shoot for the Daily Telegraph which got caught by the paparazzi. Good on them. No privacy expectations exist regardless if the hotel room as it was being used for a commercial purpose.
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Its not about the privacy expectations its about ruining the show for the viewers who have been following it. They could have made a spoiler alert so you had the choice to click on it or ignore it.
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Oh,gawd …
…. and Tyrion is a Targaryen, son of the mad king who raped his mother, one of the three heads of the dragon.
What a silly world we live in.
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I have zero interest in the TV show, but I really hope the Daily Mail loses any readers and goodwill it has. Releasing a spoiler like that, to literally ‘spoil’ the show for the people who have been enjoying it, is small minded and mean
I’m old enough to have been incredibly excited about the ‘who shot JR’ Dallas cliffhanger, where the show ran in the US about a month before it ran in the UK and to my knowledge, no other media ran the reveal
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