Culture

The Daily Telegraph Tried To Cover The Golden Globes But It Was An Absolute Trainwreck

This is really, really bad.

by Osman Faruqi  8 January 2018
Golden Globes

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There was a lot going on at this year’s Golden Globes.

We had Oprah’s electrifying speech, Seth Myers’ funny and pointed monologue, actors calling out harassment in the industry and the gender pay gap, and of course all the actual winners. The stories pretty much write themselves at an awards show.

But Australia’s own The Daily Telegraph had a tough time of it. Everyone’s favourite tabloid tried to cover the co-ordinated campaign by actors to wear black on the red carpet and draw attention to sexual harassment and assault. Unfortunately, they fucked it up. On numerous fronts.

In an article titled “Blacklash: The stars who refused to wear black at the Globes” the paper drew attention to three attendees: Zenobia Shroff, Barbara Meier and Blanca Blanco, who didn’t take part in the #TimesUp campaign’s call to wear black.

The first big error The Tele made was in attempting to inform its audience who the three women were. The paper described Shroff as “a cast member of nominated film The Big Sikh“.

Now Shroff was a cast member of a film last year, but that film was called The Big Sick not The Big Sikh. The film was written by Silicon Valley star Kumail Nanjiani and was the third highest grossing independent film of 2017. Shroff plays Nanjiani’s mother in the biographical film, but I feel at this point it’s important highlight that the movie is not about Sikhs.

Nanjiani and his family are Pakistani Muslims and a significant part of the plot revolves around their culture and faith. The movie is called The Big Sick because Nanjiani’s girlfriend, played by Zoe Kazan, gets quite… sick.

Somehow The Daily Telegraph has gotten confused by the presence of brown people and assumed that a movie called The Big Sick should actually have been called The Big Sikh, even though it’s not about Sikhs.

What did they think this film was? A horror movie about a giant Sikh?

To its credit the paper eventually edited the story and inserted the correct title of the film. But, unfortunately, there was a much, much bigger problem with the reporting.

Zenobia Shroff is definitely in The Big Sick. However, the woman pictured in The Daily Telegraph’s story is not Zenobia Shroff. It’s Meher Tatna the President of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the organisation that hosts the Golden fucking Globes.

I just can’t. Not only did the paper make up a fake name for a real film because it saw some brown people and lost its mind, it confused the person in charge of the whole fucking awards with a completely different brown person.

Nanjiani himself caught wind of this clusterfuck and called them out on Twitter.

He also pointed out that, contrary to the Tele’s description, The Big Sick was not actually nominated for a Golden Globe.

And if you think we’re done, we’re not. There’s still more.

Before the The Daily Telegraph published its story, Tatna had already gone on record explaining her decision to not wear black, pointing out that it wasn’t culturally appropriate. Instead she expressed her solidarity by wearing a #TimesUp pin.

Jesus bloody Christ.

As usual, Benjamin Law has already said it best: