Television icon Jana Wendt has slammed the #MeToo campaign to out male sexual predators and denied a rumour she was the victim of a sex attack in her youth.
The Gold Logie winner, who was once Australia’s highest paid TV presenter, is speaking out after former Ten newsreader Tracey Spicer promised to publish an expose of 65 Australian media personalities.
Wendt, a former 60 Minutes reporter who later hosted A Current Affair on the Nine Network, described the ‘Me Too’ campaign as a witch hunt in an opinion piece for the conservative Spectator Australia magazine.
‘Public shaming and its consequence, public contrition, have overflowed like a blocked convenience during 2017,’ she said.
‘My own inadequate testimony notwithstanding, it would be a mistake, dear friends, to compromise on vigilance this festive season.
‘By all means, love and share, but beware of old men bearing gifts.’
The veteran journalist, who began her television career in the early 1980s as a Ten newsreader in Melbourne, also denied a rumour she was a victim of a male sexual predator.
‘I have a confession, which I realise may disturb some readers,’ she said.
‘I was recently contacted by a very pleasant reporter who offered me the opportunity to relate my experiences with a hitherto unexposed sexual predator who, apparently, serially forced himself on women a couple of decades ago.
‘With a surprising degree of confidence, the friendly reporter suggested the alleged roll call of victims included me.’
‘I was forced to report the man had never touched me,’ Wendt said.
‘Or if he did, I’d missed it. Nor had I been aware of any such claims about him until the reporter’s call. Disappointment all round. A case, I’m afraid, of #NotMeToo.’
As host of A Current Affair during the late 1980s, she refused to front the program for two days after it aired a segment about topless female shop assistants.
She is speaking out about alleged cases of sexual assault in the television industry three weeks after former Nine Network gardening show host Don Burke was interviewed on her old A Current Affair program to deny a series of claims that he had sexually harassed female colleagues.
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