Gossip columnist
someone who writes a gossip column in a newspaper or magazine
A gossip columnist is someone who writes a gossip column in a newspaper or magazine, especially in a gossip magazine. Gossip columns are written in a light, informal style, and relate opinions about the personal lives or conduct of celebrities from show business (motion picture movie stars, theater, and television actors), politicians, professional sports stars, and other wealthy people or public figures. Some gossip columnists broadcast segments on radio and television.
The columns mix factual material on arrests, divorces, marriages and pregnancies, which are obtained from official records, with more speculative gossip stories, rumors, and innuendo about romantic relationships, affairs, and purported personal problems.
Gossip columnists have a reciprocal relationship with the celebrities whose private lives are splashed about in the gossip column's pages. While gossip columnists sometimes engage in (borderline) defamatory conduct, spreading innuendo about alleged immoral or illegal conduct that can injure celebrities' reputations, they also serve as an important part of the publicity machine that turns actors and musicians into celebrities and superstars 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.
Libel and defamation
While gossip columnists' "bread and butter" is rumor, innuendo, and allegations of scandalous behavior, there is a fine line between the legally-acceptable spreading of rumors and the making of defamatory statements, the latter of which can provoke a lawsuit. Newspaper and magazine editorial policies normally require gossip columnists to have a source for all of their allegations to protect the publisher from lawsuits for defamation (libel).
In the United States, celebrities or public figures can sue for libel if their private lives are revealed in a gossip column and they believe that their reputation has been defamed – that is, exposed to hatred, contempt, ridicule, or pecuniary loss.
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This entry incorporates text from “Gossip columnist” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.