A video of Heath Ledger hanging out at a drug-fueled party two years before his death would seem to constitute must-see material for a tabloid entertainment show.
But when such a video ended up in the hands of the producers of Entertainment Tonight, the program declined to broadcast it, a spokeswoman said, "out of respect for Heath Ledger's family." The 28-year-old actor died on Jan. 22 from what the medical examiner called an accidental overdose of prescription medications.
Amy Winehouse did not merit the same discretion. Images from a video that showed her smoking what a British tabloid, The Sun, said was a pipe of crack cocaine, as well as admitting to having taken "about six" Valium, were widely disseminated in the news media around the same time.
When Owen Wilson was hospitalized in August after an apparent suicide attempt, his plight was the subject of a single US Weekly cover story. Not so Britney Spears, recently confined in a psychiatric ward, who has inspired six cover stories for the magazine during the same time span.
When Kiefer Sutherland was released from the jail in Glendale, California, after serving a 48-day sentence for a drunken driving conviction, the event merited little more than buried blurbs.
Contrast this to Paris Hilton's return to jail last year after a brief release to serve the rest of a 45-day sentence for a probation violation involving alcohol-related reckless driving. The event invited a level of attention that evoked the OJ Simpson trial. Hordes of cameras enveloped the limousine that ferried the tear-streaked heiress to jail.
Yes, women are hardly the only targets of harsh news media scrutiny - just ask Mel Gibson. But months of parallel incidents like these seem to demonstrate disparate standards of coverage. Men who fall from grace are treated with gravity and distance, while women in similar circumstances are objects of derision, titillation and black comedy.
Some celebrities and their handlers are now saying straight out that the news media have a double standard.
"Without a doubt, women get rougher treatment, less sensitive treatment, more outrageous treatment," said Ken Sunshine, a publicist whose clients include Ben Affleck and Barbra Streisand. "I represent some pretty good-looking guys, and I complain constantly about the way they're treated and covered. But it's absolutely harder for the women I represent."
Liz Rosenberg, a publicist at Warner Bros/Reprise Records who represents Madonna, among others, also thinks sexism is at work. "Do you see them following Owen Wilson morning, noon and night?" she asked.
Some editors confirm that they handle female celebrities differently. But the reason, they contend, is rooted not in sexist attitudes, but in the demographics of their audience.
The readership of US Weekly, for example, is 70 percent female; for People, it's more than 90 percent, according to the editors of these magazines.
"Almost no female magazines will put a solo male on the cover," said Janice Min, the editor in chief of US Weekly. "You just don't. It's cover death. Women don't want to read about men unless it's through another woman: a marriage, a baby, a breakup."
Thus, magazine coverage of Ledger's death gave way to stories about Michelle Williams, Ledger's former girlfriend and the mother of his daughter; US Weekly, for instance, put the headlines "A Mother's Pain" and "My Heart is Broken" atop a four-page spread. Mary-Kate Olsen, telephoned several times by the discoverer of Ledger's body, came in for it, too: "What Mary-Kate Knows" trumpeted In Touch Weekly.
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