14 DAY TRIAL // Angelina Jolie is the world’s most powerful celebrity right now – not because Forbes magazine or polls among fans say so but because she has managed to do something not even President Obama can: control the media, Joanna Hunkin of TV NZ points out. As Andrew Morton timed the release of his explosive unauthorized biography to coincide with the media tour for “Salt,” Jolie’s latest movie, it’s strange how most Hollywood news outlets refuse to cover the former.
That happens because, if they did lend an ear to the allegations printed in Morton’s book, they would literally lose whatever small chance they had of ever scoring an Angelina exclusive. The actress, Hunkin reveals, is among the very few celebs who do not employ a publicist – and that’s because she prefers to handle all matters of public image herself, with an iron fist nonetheless. Because she only gives out interviews to outlets who run favorable stories on her, she literally forbids them from covering anything even remotely negative – like Morton’s book.
Thus, she controls the media. “You won’t hear a peep of it through Hollywood’s entertainment news network. Extra, Access Hollywood, Entertainment Tonight and The Insider have all chosen to ignore the scandalous tome, despite it earning instant best-seller status. And despite the fact they whole-heartedly embraced Morton’s last book – a similarly unauthorized biography of Tom Cruise. […] Morton’s publishers, St Martin’s Press, claim Hollywood is being intimidated into ignoring the story. Publicity director John Murphy told the Hollywood Reporter the shows are worried about losing access to Jolie and Brad Pitt. ‘The feat that might have been imposed on these so-called entertainment news shows by the Brangelina PR machine has got them running scared from the story’,” Hunkin writes.
Moreover, it would seem this is something Jolie and Pitt have done before, to the same excellent results. “In 2008, the New York Times wrote a damning expose of Jolie, revealing just how carefully – and craftily – the actress handles her image. The story claimed Jolie and Pitt demanded $US14 million for the first pictures of their twins – plus a contractual promise that the magazine’s coverage would be positive, not just in that instance but in the future as well. According to the Times, Jolie controls her public image with her own iron fist – choosing not to employ a publicist or media manager. When she does deign to give interviews, contracts are put in place to ensure all coverage is positive and that material cannot be used for future stories. And it’s not just the media that have fallen prey to Jolie’s stranglehold. In 2006, she convinced the Namibian government to refuse visas to any foreign journalists unless they had express written permission from the couple,” Hunkin argues.
According to the report, it’s the media’s fault for being thusly controlled by Jolie. Presumably, flexibility and competition among media outlets allows the actress to have the final say in negotiations for an exclusive, and thus to impose her own terms for the coverage she gets. That is to say, if publications in the US were all to say no to her from the start, eventually she would have to give in and play the game by the same rules as every other celebrity out there. Of course, that would also mean that they’d lose their exclusives. With exclusives, they’d also lose millions and millions of dollars in advertising – and, clearly, none is willing to risk that.
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