People Won't Stop Paying The Paparazzi To Stalk Michelle Williams
 Thursday, March 6th, 2008

Last month, Michelle Williams - the mother of Heath Ledger's 2-year-old daughter, Matilda - released a statement to the press, begging them to grant her privacy and allow her to heal her "broken heart" in private.  Not even two weeks later, People magazine published photographs of her and Heath's family at Ledger's private burial and ceremony.  And now, in the latest (March 10th) issue of People, on page 28, a new photograph is printed:  of Michelle Williams, Matilda, and Michelle's mother Carla on the sidewalk outside her home.

Matilda's tiny fist grasps Michelle's hand.  Michelle's mother is right behind Williams' shoulder, a subconsciously maternal pillar of strength.  Three generations of a grieving family try to walk off some angst in their own neighborhood; Michelle's arm clutches her coat to her chest in a self-protective gesture, and behind her shades you can see she is wary and that she spots the lurking paparazzi.

Yet the caption to the photo reveals none of this, and paints a friendly, "Michelle Williams takes a neighborhood stroll with mom Carla and 2-year-old daughter Matilda."

A neighborhood stroll with the fam - sounds so innocent, doesn't it?

After the private funeral photos were posted online by People's staff, we sent them a message, copying it to Splash News, the agency that sent the paparazzi to the memorial service.  We asked whether or not People planned to continue to profit off of the Williams and Ledger families' most private grieving moments.  Michelle and Heath Ledger's family wasn't given a day to grieve, a week to grieve, a month to grieve.  They were given no time out of the white-hot spotlight at all.

No one responded.

Yet - why should they?  Losing a few readers must mean nothing to them.  People is owned and published by Time, Inc.:  the magazine publisher that boasts the titles of Time, Essence, Sports Illustrated, Fortune, Golf Magazine, and many others.  And Time, Inc. is owned by Time Warner, a monster in the entertainment industry that owns enough cable channels to make your head spin:  USA, BET, E!, the Starz channels, CNN, TNT, TLC, QVC, The Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, HBO, Cinemax, the Cartoon Network...the list doesn't even end there.  In their partnership with the monopolistic telecommunications venture AT&T, Time Warner seems to fall just short of owning our entire nation, period.

And, of course, Time Warner and AOL are the owners of the trashiest tabloid TV and internet enterprise this side of the millennium:  Harvey Levin's TMZ.

They have little reason, as you can see, to care what People readers might stop to realize is an amoral and invasive transaction with photogs to snap as many private moments of Michelle Williams as possible.  If one was to boycott Time Warner - it would take a hell of a lot of research to find out just how much they really own, and even then there are a lot of worthwhile directors and films that you'd miss out on.

And, hey, it's hardly the first time that a widow has been plastered in magazines for someone else's gain.  To People, it's just another day.


Whether or not it's futile, you stand to lose nothing by letting People and Splash News know how you feel about this.  Here's our simple copy and paste petition.  Let's see how much of a "splash" readers can really make...sign it, and pass it on!  It has to start somewhere, doesn't it?

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