News and entertainment sites were abuzz over the weekend with the news that actor George Clooney had married his fiancée, British lawyer Amal Alamuddin, on Saturday during a star-studded ceremony in Venice, Italy.
But a sampling of the wedding headlines reveal that much of the media chose to focus mainly on the star, while largely ignoring details about his new bride:
“Sorry Ladies and Gents, George Clooney Got Married” - Las Vegas Review-Journal
“George Clooney Legally Ties the Knot” – WMUR, Manchester
“George Clooney’s Wedding” - Santa Rosa Press Democrat
“They Did. They Do. George Clooney Wedding No. 2” - The Detroit News
While many media sources did mention both Clooney and Alamuddin in the headline, almost all emphasized Clooney first.
An article in USA Today, which stated, “one of the world’s most eligible and sexy stars” was marrying a lawyer. The New York Daily News wrote that the “Hollywood heartthrob” had “finally uttered the words that he’d long sworn off.”
But there were instances that bucked the media trend, among them The Business Woman Media, which reported, “Internationally Acclaimed Barrister Amal Alamuddin Marries an Actor.” “We only hope he doesn’t hold her back from conquering the world. We think this George Clooney fellow has scored big time. He’s been quoted as saying he was ‘marrying up’… we agree,” Amanda Rose wrote for The Business Woman Media.
Alamuddin is a graduate of Oxford University – where she received the Shrigley Award, and also has a degree from New York University School of Law. She is an acclaimed human rights lawyer who has worked on important cases involving war crimes and represented the controversial WikiLeaks whistleblower Julian Assange.
A writer for Australia’s The Age, Josephine Tovey, summoned up the coverage this way: “If our world was one that valued achievements in education, politics and human rights as much as it did celebrity, headlines around the world would have this week screamed: ‘Sorry boys - Amal is taken,’”
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