Channel Ten-bound Lisa Wilkinson has slammed the media and paparazzi photographers for their intrusion into her life since she sensationally quit Channel Nine 10 days ago.
Wilkinson, who also has an editor-in-large role at The Huffington Post, has penned a column on the site to deride the media for its overzealous attention following her move.
“For the past week I have been the subject of literally thousands of articles, blogs and gossip columns, most of them containing largely inaccurate accounts of my recent job change,” Wilkinson wrote.
“While I appreciate the news was all a little, shall we say, abrupt, viewers have been incredibly warm and generous in their messages of support, and I am humbled by the fact that it has generated an important national debate — but the intense level of scrutiny has been utterly overwhelming.
“Paparazzi have been camped outside our house. The prying lenses of complete strangers have captured and published images taken through my kitchen window. They’ve followed my children. I have been chased down streets. Into cul-de-sacs.”
The column, which you can read in full here, is titled “A Little Bit Of Perspective About What’s Really Important” and attempts to deflect her own media woes with that of a media friend, Rebecka Delforce, who recently passed away of cancer.
In somewhat of an irony, Nine used Wilkinson’s role on The Huffington Post as one of the reasons not to renew her contract, or at the least not meet her salary demands.
Wilkinson, who reportedly gets a six-figure sum to pen for the news site, refused to write for any of Nine’s women’s sites, a standoff that was said to have infuriated Nine’s supremos.
It had been reported that when Wilkinson broke her arm on a recent Italian holiday and subsequently broke the news first on The Huffington Post, it was last straw for her bosses at Nine. Wilkinson will take up her new role at Ten, hosting The Project, in January next year.
