Abbie Chatfield has called out the media for its negative coverage of her life, including “unfair reporting and twisting of facts” around her radio work and appearance at an event last week.
Taking to social media in an emotional video that’s since been deleted, Chatfield began: “I’m really tired, I’m really exhausted, I am completely broken. And I just wanna tell the media that you have won. So you can stop now. You’ve won, are you happy?”
She continued: “I don’t know how much one person is supposed to take of this, but in the past year, the media have gotten particularly vicious and relentless towards me. And of course, they’ve always been this way, particularly trash news outlets. But it’s becoming increasingly clear that even previously reputable sources are beginning to attempt to profit off the cash cow that the trash media outlets have created. That is Abbie Chatfield.”
She went on to accuse the media of “unfair reporting, and twisting of facts, and exaggeration of facts, and use of photos of me in articles that have nothing to do with me; attaching my face and my image to controversies that don’t exist or don’t involve me or have been exaggerated”.
She specifically called out The Daily Telegraph for reporting that she is “out of the running” as replacement of the Kyle & Jackie O Show, stating it was always intended as a two-week gig.
“This is an article that’s come out today after, apparently, I’ve heard that they were snooping over the weekend to try and get some sort of headline about me even though I’ve done nothing on air,” she added.
“Here’s the headline: ‘ARN board will not back Abbie Chatfield for permanent KIIS FM role’. So that sounds like I’ve done something wrong. ‘Abbie Chatfield is out of the running as potential replacement for Kyle and Jackie O as they…’ The thing is, I was never gunning to be the replacement of Kyle and Jackie O. I never said that, that was never implied, that was never said.”
Another example was a Daily Mail Australia article regarding The Devil Wears Prada 2 premiere, accusing Chatfield of cutting the queue.
“There was a headline that implies that I said, ‘Do you know who I am?’ That’s what I would take from this. That’s my opinion, that a photo of me captioned, ‘Do you know who I am?! Aussie influencers branded entitled for queue-jumping at The Devil Wears Prada 2 premiere in Sydney’. That would imply that I jumped a queue,” she said.
“I did not jump a queue; my friend Mitch Churi jumped a queue. It’s a funny, silly situation. But the thing is — and Mitch Churi just joined me in the queue — that’s why my photo was used. And it looks like I have been caught doing something wrong, but I was just joking with the photographers and asking them what they wanted.”
She went on to say that stories like this are “the reason why there are so many people that hate me for no reason, and the reason why comment sections are filled with hatred towards me that is nonsensical”.
“If you don’t like me for a reason that is valid or you disagree with a lot of my opinions, that’s fine,” she continued. “But I find that a lot of people hate me just because they hate me. And my name is almost used as like an insult now, going, ‘Oh, you’re such an Abbie Chatfield’. And people don’t even know what that means. But it seems to translate to entitled, rude, evil, vicious. And it’s because of reporting like this.”
She concluded the video by addressing the media once again: “And I guess I just wanna say: you guys have won. Well done. You’ve broken me. And I just would love for you to stop now. Please. I’m actually begging. Please just stop.”
Speaking to PEDESTRIAN.TV, Chatfield shared the impact this style of reporting has had on her.
“The constant reporting and twisting and changing of narratives in an effort to make me seem like the worst possible version of what they’re saying is just so exhausting, especially for someone who is neurodivergent,” she said.
“The way they present me is like someone dying for attention and people think I’m a criminal, the way they talk about me, and when you ask them why they don’t like me, sometimes they have fair responses and that’s fair, but most of the time when I ask people, even in comments sections or DMs, what I’ve done, they can’t answer me. And I really think it’s because of this reporting and twisting of reality.”
She also recalled an incident last year when she was associated with Australia supposedly becoming ‘too woke’.
“There was an article last year called ‘Is this when Australia hit peak woke?’ and it’s a photo of me. It has nothing to do with me, and there’s 10,000 comments saying that I’m awful or I’m violent or aggressive or whatever, and I think obviously misogyny plays a huge part in this. If you look at the way men who are literal criminals are treated versus women who speak their mind are treated, it’s pretty clear that misogyny is at play and I think it’s really hard because I know the purpose is to silence me so I’m kind of stuck and I find myself being hyperaware of how I word things or my facial expressions or if I’m on the street, I try not to be smiling or if I’m at a restaurant, I’m self-surveilling because I know that everything I do gets twisted.”
She concluded: “I can’t explain to anybody how bad it is, to be constantly misunderstood in the worst way and have that narrative shown to the general public almost as fact in ways that just skirt by defamation laws.”
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