Lisa Wilkinson slams 'incredibly menacing' paparazzi: 'Shameless'

Television host Lisa Wilkinson has launched a scathing attack on celebrity magazines and websites, despite working as an editor for Cleo and Dolly when she was younger.

As reported by The Australian, The Project host was speaking at a networking breakfast on Tuesday when she slammed the “trashy gossip” that “brings out the worst in human nature”.

She opened up to the crowd, saying that she now views the women’s magazine industry as a shameful sector.

“Every time we pick up one of those magazines in a doctor’s waiting room and every time we click on that salacious link to a trashy gossip website, not believing the ridiculous emotion-charged headline but clicking on that link nonetheless, a click means you like it, so it only brings more of it,” she started.

“In these faces women exist only to be ogled at, picked on, ridiculed, pitted against each other, laughed at or scorned; it’s designed to make us feel better if we are having a bad day, but it doesn’t, it makes us feels worse, and it simply brings out the worst in human nature.

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“It’s part of a system to weaken and suppress women and we’ve been witnessing it for decades.”

This comes after the TV host found herself attracting unwanted publicity after The Daily Mail published an “exclusive” article about her eating alone in Melbourne.

"And apparently if you’ve read any of the trashy media gossip over the last few months I’m also a craven, shameless media whore who has the temerity to eat dinner and sip on a margarita on her own while on a business trip to Melbourne — very possibly without even checking with her husband first," she told the attendees.

In March, she slammed the news website on Twitter, describing her “horrifying” experience with the paparazzi.

“I was aware of a guy. He was incredibly menacing. I saw him walk past half a dozen times, staring at me,” she began.

“I never saw a phone or camera though. I was so concerned I waited an hour, working, until I thought he had left the area.”

Fans agreed with the host, with one saying: “It’s stalking, and it’s completely unacceptable.”

“Mortifying that ‘reporters’ would stoop [to] this level, but their paymasters are to blame along with the audience that laps this stuff up!” another person replied.

"If you’re well known or anonymous, this is what women put up with ALL the time - maybe not the media camera but certainly the uncomfortable, uneasy feeling that you are being watched, studied, ogled, followed, intimidated, harassed, or commodified and objectified. It’s never ok," a third added.

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