“Readers expect a level of exaggeration: Click-bait headlines are common in digital media”

From theguardian.com about the Australian Press Council’s criticism of Woman’s Day magazine:

It’s an open secret in the gossip magazine industry that many of the stories are made up, or at least highly exaggerated.

Celebrities are increasingly vocal about the practice, with some, such as Rebel Wilson, taking legal action and others, such as the Sunrise co-host Samantha Armytage, calling them out for falsehoods.

Armytage, a popular target of the magazines, said last year the so-called sources they quoted were “made up”. “There’s a special place in hell for people who work at Woman’s Day,” she said on social media.

With standards such as these it came as a shock when Woman’s Day was rapped over the knuckles by the media watchdog last week for publishing a headline about Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, which it said was “blatantly incorrect”. . . .

“When I read this story I just thought you could pick any copy of New Idea or Woman’s Day any week and they are doing headlines like this,” Le Masurier, a former ACP magazine editor herself, says.

“This is not journalism; it was never meant to be journalism. And I’ve got a term for it: ‘fabulous reportage’.

“The way it works is they get the pictures in and then they make shit up. It’s just fantasy and all they’re trying to do is get clicks or sales in a dying market.” . . .

The council’s ruling, although it found the publication was in breach of standards for accuracy also signalled it’s OK–even expected–for these supermarket mags to “exaggerate”. The council said that “not necessarily” everything has to be “factual” when it comes to a light entertainment magazine. . . .

“Celebrity and gossip magazines are purchased for light entertainment, with readers not necessarily assuming that everything presented is factual,” a spokesman says. . . .