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Peter Carrette and Peter Blunden on Kylie Minogue and the media

Sunday, 22 May  2005 

This week the media has come under fire for its excessive coverage of Kylie Minogue's battle with breast cancer.

We talk to two of the people involved in that story, veteran paparazzi Peter Carrette and editor of Melbourne's Herald-Sun newspaper, Peter Blunden.Both believe that they've done nothing wrong and are standing by their actions

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Sunday Profile Transcript: May 22, 05

Introduction:

Hello, Monica Attard here and you’re listening to Sunday Profile. This week the media comes under fire for its excessive coverage of the Kylie Minogue story. Tonight we talk to a veteran paparazzi, Peter Carrette and Herald Sun editor Peter Blunden and despite public outcry they are more than willing to defend their trade.

Well most would understand that being diagnosed with cancer is one of the most harrowing life events possible to experience. Perhaps even more so it you’re a superstar who’s going to have to live the ordeal under public scrutiny. There would be very few of us indeed who don’t want to know: What Kylie is feeling, who’s by her side, how harrowed she looks, what she thinks the effects of breast cancer might be on her international blazing career or indeed her oft stated desire for a family. The media has copped a bagging this week for its coverage of the Minogue story. There they were the news folk along with their paparazzi stable mates outside the Minogue family home in Melbourne, counting the number of trees in the front garden for there was precious little else to photograph or report. But what right do they have to do this and how far do they allow themselves to go? A few months ago freelance photographers Jamie Fawcett and Ben McDonald found themselves on the receiving end of an interim restraining order for allegedly placing a listening device outside Nicole Kidman’s home and this week Victorian Premier Steve Bracks has issued the paparazzi a stern warning, especially those of them who’ve flown in from London to cover the Minogue story, ‘give the woman her privacy and respect Australia’s Privacy Laws’. Well has this tamed the paparazzi?

Peter Carrette is one of those pesky little flies albeit of the old school where sending a bunch of flowers to the star was the way to coax them before the camera. Carrette has worked on Fleet Street, in New York and now in Australia. He thinks the Minogue camp has made a lot of money manipulating the media, even so this week’s feeding frenzy in Melbourne he says was an exercise in futility because they were never going to get a shot of Kylie. Not that he condemns the practices of snapping the unwilling, well how could he? He once dressed up as a doctor to snap Marianne Faithful in detox in Sydney but he thinks today’s new breed of paparazzi have no ethical hang-ups whatsoever.

Peter Carrette:

There’s a new breed of paparazzi by the look of all this stuff recently with Nicole and the sort of stuff that’s been going on since the death of Princess Diana when ‘paparazzi’ became a dirty word and everybody who was a paparazzi then denied that they’d ever been a paparazzi because people were blaming the paparazzi for killing Princess Diana. Certainly the pack of photographers in Paris that chased her around on motorbikes and did that sort of stuff day and night were a different breed of photographers, we never had that sort of people in Australia.

Monica Attard:

Well, so can you just tell us a little bit about the difference?

Peter Carrette:

Those people are not, you know they had no newspaper training at all, they were just opportunists with cameras like the pesky paparazzi from Federico Fellini’s film where the name paparazzi comes from. There were a lot of people making a lot of money out of Princess Diana and all that sort of stuff but Princess Diana would give 150 days a year to launching charities and planting trees and children’s hospitals and stuff like that where she posed three or four times a day and was nice to the press that she worked with, so there was absolutely no need to go chasing her around when she was pregnant in Saint Lucia on holiday.

Monica Attard:

Did you ever chase her around?

Peter Carrette:

No, I never chased Princess Diana around. I chased Koo Stark and Andrew around, I went to Mystique and chased Prince Andrew when he was with porno star ‘Koo Stark’ and I got put in prison there for hiding in the bushes at Margaret’s place and getting some pictures of bare-chested Prince Andrew and stuff like that but again that was international news. I was working for The Daily Mail and for Time Magazine.

Monica Attard:

How much did you get for a picture of Prince Andrew and Koo Stark?

Peter Carrette:

30 000 dollars.

Monica Attard:

For one picture?

Peter Carrette:

Yes, in those days that was a lot of money.

Monica Attard:

It’s a lot of money these days.

Peter Carrette:

A lot of money these days, but I mean recently there was a set of pictures taken in South Africa of Angelina Jolie with Brad Pitt. One Australian publication group has reportedly paid 160 000 for those pictures, the Americans paid 400 000 US for those pictures and Fergie’s toe sucking was 2 million dollars worth of pictures and so I mean it is a lucrative profession.

Monica Attard:

What’s the picture that you’ve received the most money for snapping?

Peter Carrette:

I door-stepped a war once in Grenada, Ronald Reagan’s little war in Grenada when Ronnie Reagan invaded with the American troops into Grenada, I’d already crept into his war the night before on a boat and got all the troops arriving and coming off their planes and Americans being shot down and stuff like that. I made money on those pictures in the Grenada War than I ever made on any paparazzi pictures.

Monica Attard:

And what about paparazzi style photos, I mean what’s the most you’ve been paid, which photo have you been paid the most in that genre?

Peter Carrette:

The stuff that I’ve worked on over the years or worked on when I was in the paparazzi was stuff like Rod Stewart and Rachel Hunter on the roof of a hotel kissing cuddling taken from the Sydney Harbour Bridge. A set of pictures like that would have been worth 40 or 50 000 dollars and Rod was up for it. You weren’t directly told by the PR’s that Rod and Rachel would be at the swimming pool at 3 o’clock. She had a fair idea from a chauffeur or someone that was getting a backhander that this was what was going on and Rod is famous for his blondes as this whole Minogue thing, I mean the Minogue management had been holding the world media for ransom for ten years, they controlled everything that she does. If Danny Minogue gets married then they get $110 000 from New Idea or Woman’s Day for the wedding, they pay some forfeits over 3 grand and divvy up the profits, so this thing now is coming back to bite them on the bum I think.

Monica Attard:

So is it fair enough then that photographers are camped outside the family house and trying to get a snap of Kylie going off to the hospital?

Peter Carrette:

Well let me say two things on that. One is that’s a total waste of time in actual point of fact if Kylie’s people don’t want you to get pictures you won’t get pictures, she’ll leave the house in a car with dark windows and she’ll drive in under the bloody hospital, get out into a lift and you won’t get pictures and they will sell their pictures at the end of the story and do little sit-downs through Molly Meldrum and give the money to Brest Cancer, obviously there’ll be large donations to Breast Cancer from these sort of stories. I’m already hearing from London about Kylie and Kylie, Olivia Newton John and Delta doing a tour together and giving all the money to Breast Cancer. But there’s no point in people camping outside and 20 out of those 30 people camped outside of her place are legitimate staff working married gentlemen photographers.

Monica Attard:

Can I put this to you: if they were to go further than that in their efforts to get a shot of Kylie. If they were to pay somebody in the hospital to get inside to get a snap, is that legitimate?

Peter Carrette:

It’s very hard to control these days as they found out with Rene Rivkin, somebody took a picture of Rene Rivkin when he first arrived in detention on a mobile phone, it was on the front of the Sunday Papers and caused outrage. Because of the days of digital phones and every camera having a bloody phone, people will do more of this sort of stuff. Certainly in my early career, 35 years ago I dressed as a doctor and did what seemed like some very tacky pictures of Marianne Faithful when she overdosed here on heroin and was here to do the film Ned Kelly with Mick Jagger. Now, that was an outrageous famous set of pictures that I did as a kid, I was 19 years old and I made a lot of money on it.

Monica Attard:

What did you make on it?

Peter Carrette:

Again, probably 30 or 40 000 dollars in those days in those terms but it wasn’t about the money or the fame or anything else, it was about where I was bought up. I was brought up in Fleet Street where that sort of behaviour was perfectly acceptable and quite accepted. In my 35 year in the business doing everything from Vogue fashion in Paris to six years in New York and working for Time and News Week and wars and you know starving children and land mine stuff and important photo journalism around the world, the one thing that’s become clear to me is that fluff is what sells and those, the woman’s magazines that I used to work for, Woman’s Weekly and all those, are just show business rags. It’s no more about cooking and knitting and what’s good for the housewife and home ec, that’s all out the window.

Monica Attard:

Have you changed your views Peter Carrette or do you still think that those sort of tactics, dressing up as a medico to get in to take a snapshot of Marianne Faithful in a Detox clinic in Sydney is okay or is it as you say that Kylie Minogue’s management have made a fortune cashing in on her image and manipulating the media, therefore why shouldn’t she also be subject to media scrutiny as she has been?

Peter Carrette:

In this particular instance it’s a news story and anything that they do within the bounds of not hassling her is legitimate, unless a photographer actually steps out of bounds and trespasses on her property or gets in her face and annoys her or stalks her in some way, there’s no law against them doing their job and most of those are staff, respectable photographers being paid a day rate by the ABC or The Australian to stand there, that’s a news job. Normally no, those people that hang around outside Kylie’s place, outside the hotels, they’re not photographers, they’re not newshounds, they’re just opportunists on motorbikes, ex-wedding photographers and ex-people that used to bust in on hotels and get husbands and wives ex-privatised that bugged Nicole Kidman. They’re not media photographers and media people, they’re just opportunists that see this business as a way of making money.

Monica Attard:

So was there ever a time that you can remember where the paparazzi tried to woo their subjects, you know a bunch of flowers?

Peter Carrette:

I do and I encourage my photographers to do the same. I send Nicole flowers when she comes home and I send pregnant stars flowers in hospital when they have children and people I’ve grown up with.

Monica Attard:

In the hope of?

Peter Carrette:

Building a better relationship with these people, you know I make money out of them, if we communicate well, if they do a picture for me that’s different from everybody else on the red carpet or for my photographer, then I have more chance of selling that picture than the other bloke that’s scowling at the other end that was chasing the pregnant wife down the street last week.

Monica Attard:

But how does that work, I mean how do they know who you are on the red carpet?

Peter Carrette:

Well I’ve been around for 30 odd years and people like Naomi Watts and all those I grew up with, I offered to do Naomi’s head shots when she was 17,18 and 19 for nothing, so now she’s a big star, she technically should come back and give me half an hour and say, “Look, I’ll do a Vogue session for you now Peter.” But they don’t, I mean they’re always too busy or they’re doing something for charity or something like that but they know who you are and Naomi does give me special time and Nicole certainly is very nice to me on the carpet because I treat her with respect and I wouldn’t photograph her children because if somebody kidnapped her kids from my pictures and something happened to those kids, woe betide, I’ve got my own child, I wouldn’t like that. That’s not on. It’s not fair.

Monica Attard:

Now what brought you to Australia, really when all the stars are living on the other side of the globe?

Peter Carrette:

I was a copyboy, my family are all printers and I was supposed to be a printer but I took a job in Sir Frank Packer’s office in Ludgate House in Fleet Street when I was a kid to be near the fathers of the Chapel to be a printer and worked with all these outrageous Australians in Fleet Street and loved them and loved the fact that they call a spade a spade and that they were outrageous larrikins and got drunk. I was used to all this British society and class and the wrong regiment and the wrong school and that and thought, “No, I’m going out there with all of these blokes. They swear and drink and…” “We don’t know what sort of lifestyle we’ve got here”, I said to Jack Thompson, “It’s a long way away Jack” and Jack said, “Yeah, and we’re trying to push it further away mate.” It’s a wonderful country Australia you know. People like Jack, I photographed Jack yesterday for Okay Magazine but I’ve been photographing Jack for 30 odd years. I did one of his Cleo covers and his second centrefold and I’ve grown up with his son Patrick and Noah Taylor and all those kids, they ring you up socially to do things for them and it’s an all win situation.

Monica Attard:

So stars actually do make contact with you to get you to photograph them to put in the paper so that they can push their own publicity barrel?

Peter Carrette:

Absolutely and publicists call us that are not supposed to and say, “Look I didn’t tell you this but somebody will be leaving Long Grain Restaurant tonight with somebody they shouldn’t be.”

Monica Attard:

And even when they may be acting for that person?

Peter Carrette:

Whether they be acting for that person or used to act for that person, or was sacked by that person recently, it’s as simple as that or their wife is going out with that person or you know politicians and people ring you up about various politicians and stuff that you don’t want to be involved in and don’t want to know about and I don’t get involved in people’s private lives. If it’s a news story, if the whole world, if you read about it on the front page, be it Chuck Mundine or a little girl in a car crash or something, if it’s news then there is a certain amount of pressure that brought to bear on news organisations and photographers to gain the best pictures and to gain the best information that the buying public want to bloody well know about. That’s why those magazines work and that’s why they pay big money for pictures because you public want to see that stuff.

Monica Attard:

Now Peter, you are based in Sydney and of course you’re nowhere near the action of the Kylie Minogue story which is down in Melbourne but you still managed to have one of your photos splashed across the front pages of the British tabloids this week and you’ve earned yourself a nice little wage as well.

Peter Carrette:

Well the picture was a picture of Kylie that News Limited had of Kylie cuddling a little cancer victim in 1998, it was a beautiful picture and I offered that to some London papers. The London papers run it big with a story saying “Kylie’s been involved with cancer and has been concerned about it for years and here’s the picture to prove it and this lovely little girl’s a friend of hers.”

Monica Attard:

And how much did you get paid for that one?

Peter Carrette:

The picture itself is probably worth 1000 pound which would convert to about 2000 dollars, most of that will come back to the news organisation in this country but it’s about what will happen from that, now when the news organisations in London are trying to track down this little girl and the they’ll find her and pay her 20 000 dollars to cancer research and do a story on ‘my friend Kylie ‘and you know, how Kylie changed her life and stuff like that. So the things you do can actually have a far reaching affect.

Monica Attard:

Peter Carrette, a final question. When you tell people what you do for a living, what sort of response do you get?

Peter Carrette:

Some people think it’s very glamorous and they all want to do it. All my ex-wives or most of them have ended up being photographers or being involved in the business, coming from backpackers and end up being photographers or agents of them.

Monica Attard:

Yes, how many have there been Peter?

Peter Carrette:

4.

Monica Attard:

That’s not a bad strike rate.

Peter Carrette:

Oh, you know,, us old fellas, I’m 57, I mean I’ve been around for a while and you’re hear for a good time not a long time aren’t you, I mean, what can I say!

Monica Attard:

And that was Peter Carrette, paparazzi from London who’s now operating out of Sydney. Well who buys the paparazzi shots, who splashes them across the front pages of the country’s newspapers, who feeds the country’s appetite for more and more prying news of the stars that they love? Well one person who does so is Peter Blunden, editor of Melbourne’s Herald Sun who this week on one single day devoted nine entire pages to Kylie Minogue’s breast cancer. Despite this, Peter Blunden has lashed out at what he calls the hypocrisy of a media for criticising the media for doing what they’re all doing: reporting on Kylie Minogue.

Peter Blunden:

I have seen an enormous amount of hypocrisy over this, never seen anything quite like it actually, television have clearly shown the house, in fact they’ve constantly shown the house, I had photograph’s of the Minogue house in my hands that night, of course I had, we know where the house is, I deliberately chose not to publish them. There are too many people out there; I don’t want to identify the house. Other newspapers gave the address; I thought that was wrong, we did not mention the name of the street, we did not show the house and I think you’ve got to know where the line is to be drawn. There’s no way we’re going to say, “Let’s not chase the story”, we wouldn’t be doing our job. We know where the line is to be drawn, there’s nothing wrong with going there but we did not show the house and the guy even noticed a commercial TV presenter last night said, “ Have a look at the paparazzi outside the house.” They’ve flown in from all over the world for that story and it’s our job to do it effectively.

Monica Attard:

Yet you feel okay about having reporters and photographers parked outside the house waiting to snap her coming out to go to the hospital?

Peter Blunden:

The ABC does it, all the commercial TVs do, everybody is wanting a picture of Kylie Minogue because she’s this enormous national figure. I don’t think there’s any result in that, I don’t think it’s hurting Kylie. Kylie’s made many many millions over the years by increasing her public profile. She’s been photographed in all sorts of ways over the years, she’s been in this profession for a long time, she understands the show business and she also understands it’s natural provided we know where the line is. Standing there waiting for a picture is not going to hurt anyone.

Monica Attard:

Well let’s talk about that Peter, now that you bring it up, I mean newspapers do quite validly argue that celebrities can’t complain press intrusion when it’s the press, the media generally that is partly responsible for their stardom, but is not different when someone is seriously ill? Are there not questions of taste which the paper then has to negotiate?

Peter Blunden:

There are questions of taste; we’re not chasing Kylie Minogue around. If there’s a chance that Kylie Minogue happens to be there and wants to talk, I have not published any pictures that have been intrusive. I haven’t got anything like that; I don’t back away from anything we’ve published in The Herald Sun so far. We haven’t tried the tricks of some other people. You know, we haven’t sought doctors or anyone or getting medical records, we know where the line is to be drawn, we’re responsible, we know what our readers want.

Monica Attard:

If someone were to offer you those medical records, would you buy them?

Peter Blunden:

No. Would I buy medical records? No.

Monica Attard:

If someone at the hospital were to offer you access into the hospital to get a snap of Kylie recovering after surgery, would you take it?

Peter Blunden:

It’s so unlikely that that would happen.

Monica Attard:

But if it happened, would you take it?

Peter Blunden:

If someone invited us in, if Kylie agreed to be photographed? Absolutely.

Monica Attard:

Regardless of her agreement?

Peter Blunden:

Absolutely not, no, you would not do that. Look I recall a case many years ago with the English Cricket Captain; some photographers went into a hospital and took pictures of him unauthorised. That caused an absolute review of the way these things are done, we do not send photographers inside hospitals, absolutely not, and in fact if anyone can think of an example when we’ve done it, there’s a perception out there that we do things like that, we don’t. If someone wants to stand at a public street in the off chance that Kylie Minogue comes past, there’s nothing wrong with that. We’re not doing anything more than that.

Monica Attard:

And if she asked you to go away, would you go away?

Peter Blunden:

If she asked us to go away we’d go away. If she’s in a public place and we took her picture we’d probably run the picture. Again, we’d look at material and see if it’s suitable, our readers know the line as well.

Monica Attard:

If she asked you, if Kylie Minogue were to ask you to get your reporters and photographers out of the street where her parents live, would you do that?

Peter Blunden:

If Kylie Minogue asked us to leave, I’d leave.

Monica Attard:

Even if she asked you to leave a public street?

Peter Blunden:

Yes, in fact I’ve said our photographers even today, I can’t really see much purpose in being there at the moment. On the first day or two if we know that Kylie is there, look there’s so much interest in this story. There are thousands and thousands of people writing to us, writing to the paper, writing messages to Kylie, I don’t really see a problem with that in the first couple of days to be honest but I think if it turned into some sort of vigil day after day after day, I don’t think that makes any sense.

Monica Attard:

Now Peter Blunden when the family issued a statement calling on the media to respect their privacy, what did that mean to you as an editor?

Peter Blunden:

Well we do respect their privacy, we’re respecting their privacy all the…

Monica Attard:

But in terms of your coverage of the story, what did it mean? Did it affect your behaviour in any way I guess is the question?

Peter Blunden:

I think we’ve been enormously responsible, it’s been a very very sympathetic coverage and it has certainly acted to highlight breast cancer in this country. I mean we had 11 000 women at the MCG trying to the same thing two weeks ago. Nothing is going to highlight it more than Kylie Minogue being diagnosed with breast cancer. I think there have been calls because quite frankly, the British media operate quite differently from us.

Monica Attard:

How so, how different is it?

Peter Blunden:

As different as you can imagine. They carry a lot of cheque books around with them and pay a lot of money for stories. I’ll tell you what there are very very few occasions when I’ve ever pulled out a chequebook for a story and I don’t think we ever try to compete with television and the British media for that sort of thing.

Monica Attard:

Now the Victorian Premier, Steve Bracks has issued a warning to the press this week, particularly the British press to respect the state’s privacy laws. You seem to be saying that there is a great difference between the behaviour of the Australian and British press corps these days, you’ve outlined chequebook journalism as one, what else in terms of the photographic coverage?

Peter Blunden:

An enormous amount of people, they pay a lot of photographers to be at various spots shooting celebrities, paying lots of money for it and running what can often be intrusive pictures and I think we saw through Princess Diana. I guess there were an awful lot of pictures, people were just really were in Britain following Princess Diana everywhere she went and I think things have changed a fair bit since then, but in Australia it really doesn’t happen like that.

Monica Attard:

Do you think the presence of the British press here on the Minogue story changes the way your paper operates?

Peter Blunden:

No, no, it doesn’t.

Monica Attard:

Well if their reporters were to start to test the privacy boundaries would that put pressure on you to do the same?

Peter Blunden:

I wouldn’t compete with them if they did. I mean it’s a hypothetical if they did that. Look, they’re going to be told the rules. I don’t know, I mean I’m probably prejudging how they might handle this story. It’s very rare that the British Press have come out here to follow a story like this but I’ve seen the British papers this week and they’ve given it more space than I think the Australian papers. She’s a huge national figure in Britain and I think there’s great public interest in her plight. What they might do, I wouldn’t want to prejudge them. They may be very responsible. I don’t know what they’re going to get. There’ve been no examples so far although it’s early days of anyone breaching anything but they’re a very aggressive competitive business there in Britain and you’ve got more than a dozen national papers and a lot of papers competing. We’ve got two newspapers in this city, we’ll compete but we’re the hometown media and we’ve got to live with our readers forever and we don’t want to cross the line.

Monica Attard:

Peter Blunden, can we just look a little closely at the idea of legitimate reporting versus harassment. I mean earlier this year Nicole Kidman obtained an interim restraining order against two photographers whom she alleged had placed a listening device outside her home in Sydney and that they were stalking her. Do you think that this marks a turning point in the relationship between celebrities and the paparazzi as we call them?

Peter Blunden:

It can do, you’ve got people, lots of freelance people who try various tactics. As a big organisation like ours, we don’t do things like that and I find it difficult sometimes to have to argue for the behaviour of a minority. I don’t want to answer for freelance photographers who plant listening devices outside celebrity’s homes. I think that’s wrong.

Monica Attard:

But if they tried to sell that stuff to you would you buy it?

Peter Blunden:

No, what listening devices? No

Monica Attard:

No the product of the listening device?

Peter Blunden:

No, unless someone captures in the listening device someone planting a crime or something like that in the, hugely in the public interest but if it’s the private business, you know the idea of planting bugs around celebrities is abhorrent quite frankly and it hasn’t happened here and they deserve all they get, the stupid people who do things like that.

Monica Attard:

And that was Peter Blunden, editor of Melbourne’s Herald Sun and that ends Sunday Profile for this week. Thanks for being with us, thanks also to Jennifer Feller, the producer and to Dan Driscoll, the technical producer. And before we go, a reminder that you can download a transcript of this program or send us an e-mail or even ipod the show by going to our website at www.abc.net.au/sundayprofile. I’m Monica Attard, stay with ABC Radio, Speaking Out with Karen Dorante is coming up next and I’ll talk to you again next week.

Last Updated: 22/05/2005 9:35:00 PM AEST

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