If the reporters had the same awareness about mental health that they have today, they might not have dug so aggressively, she said. “That was a time when she was making so much money for these magazines that we had the money to send a reporter to Antigua,” Peros said.īack then, it was Peros’ job in New York to search for nuggets of insight into Spears’ life by interviewing dancers or lighting assistants on her tour, searching through the Yellow Pages for their contact information and typically granting them anonymity to share things that they probably should not. In a March 2007 cover story that read like a play-by-play of a natural disaster and its aftermath, the magazine interviewed a diner at a sushi restaurant that Spears’ mother visited, a clubgoer at a karaoke party Spears dropped in on, and cited an anonymous source in Antigua, where Spears briefly checked into a rehab clinic. Us Weekly was one of the magazines that poured resources into relentlessly covering Spears. Part of the evolution stems from the fact that these subjects are less stigmatized, but it is also the result of journalists and editors understanding that aggressive media coverage would inevitably receive backlash now, Peros said. Weekly magazines are “much more sensitive and handle stories like this more delicately,” she said, pointing to coverage of celebrities like Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato, who have spoken more openly about mental health and substance abuse. Peros, who started as a reporter for Us Weekly in 2006 and ultimately became editor-in-chief, believes that with a decade and a half of hindsight, the media would treat Spears differently now. In an interview, Samantha Barry, editor-in-chief of Glamour, said of society’s treatment of Spears, “Hopefully we’re in a place where we won’t do that again, where we won’t lift up these celebrities - in particular women - and then proceed to rip them down.” Even the game show “Family Feud” found a way to work Spears in, asking contestants to list things that she had lost in the past year (“her hair,” “her husband”). It wasn’t just the paparazzi and the tabloids that reported - sometimes breathlessly - on Spears’ marriages, children, substance abuse issues and mental health challenges: So did The New York Times, as well as other newspapers, television news outlets and late-night comedy programs. 5, traces the origins of Spears’ conservatorship, the legal arrangement that has mandated that other individuals - primarily her father - have had control over her personal life and finances for the past 13 years, following her 2008 hospitalization after a three-hour standoff involving her two toddler sons and her ex-husband Kevin Federline. The new documentary, “Framing Britney Spears,” which premiered on Hulu and FX on Feb. “I could say I was just doing my job but that feels very Nuremberg Trial-y, and I am responsible for what comes out of my mouth.”Īnd on Friday, Timberlake issued an apology to Spears on Instagram, writing that he was “deeply sorry for the times in my life where my actions contributed to the problem, where I spoke out of turn, or did not speak up for what was right.” (He also apologized to Janet Jackson, with whom he appeared in 2004 at the Super Bowl halftime show.)

I feel terribly if I hurt you,” Silverman said. Silverman, who had joked on MTV that Spears’ children were “the most adorable mistakes,” did just that on an episode of her podcast that was released Thursday, saying that, at the time, she had not understood that big-time celebrities could have their feelings hurt.

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