Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
Speaker 1: It's Friday, February fourteen. John Winfield, the husband of missing
Speaker 1: woman Bromwin. Winfield, was the beneficiary of several hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands of dollars left to him by a neighbor, but
Speaker 1: the bequest is shrouded in mystery. That's the big revelation
Speaker 1: in a new episode of our investigative podcast series Bromwyin
Speaker 1: and it's live now at Bromwin podcast dot com. Netflix's
Speaker 1: new show Apple Cider Vinegar is all about the lies
Speaker 1: of cancer fraudster Bell Gibson, but the show itself contains
Speaker 1: material that's not entirely true. Today, The Australian's journalist Richard Gilliot,
Speaker 1: who exposed Gibson as a fraud, on why he's not
Speaker 1: happy that the show has given credit to other journalists.
Speaker 1: This episode contains swearing.
Speaker 2: You say, this woman's stalking, Yeah, like six months moving.
Speaker 1: Why did it take you so long to report it?
Speaker 1: I think she needs help.
Speaker 2: She comes to make work.
Speaker 1: Last year, the world was obsessed with Baby Reindeer. If
Speaker 1: you're one of the few people who didn't watch the show,
Speaker 1: here's a quick summary. Baby Reindeer was a hugely popular
Speaker 1: Netflix series that followed the life of a struggling comedian
Speaker 1: and bartender and his terrifying brush with a stalker. The
Speaker 1: opening sequence included on screen text which said, this is
Speaker 1: a true story, not based on a true story. A
Speaker 1: true story. Well, the woman who had supposedly inspired the
Speaker 1: stalker character was furious and sued Netflix for defamation. Netflix
Speaker 1: tried to get the case thrown out, but the judge
Speaker 1: said Baby Reindeer was wrongly billed as a true story
Speaker 1: and that there was a reasonable gap between her purported
Speaker 1: real life behavior and that of her on screen character.
Speaker 1: That defamation troll should take place a bit later this year.
Speaker 1: Maybe Reindeer is just one of many series which sit
Speaker 1: in a gray area of fictionalized reality. It's a popular
Speaker 1: genre of show that isn't a documentary, but isn't a
Speaker 1: complete work of fiction either. Some call it a docudrama.
Speaker 1: And Netflix is once again wading into these murky waters,
Speaker 1: this time with an Australian story. I'd like to welcome
Speaker 1: on the stage Shelle Gibson yep, Belle Gibson, the notorious
Speaker 1: fraudster and cancer faker. Her story really is stranger than fiction.
Speaker 1: Gibson claimed to have used alternative cancer therapies to survive
Speaker 1: a malignant brain tumor and to be suffering a range
Speaker 1: of other cancers riddled throughout her body. In twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: Richard Gilliot and The Australian revealed she was making it
Speaker 1: all up. She didn't have a brain tumor, she hadn't
Speaker 1: died on an operating table and been revived. Her blood, uterus,
Speaker 1: spleen and liver were stubbornly cancer free. After Richard Gilliot
Speaker 1: exposed her lies, Gibson later confessed everything to a women's
Speaker 1: magazine and gave one of history's most awkward TV interviews
Speaker 1: to the Nine Networks sixty Minutes program Here's Belle with
Speaker 1: reporter Tara Brown on sixty Minutes in twenty eighteen, three
Speaker 1: years after Richard revealed in The Australian she was making
Speaker 1: it all up.
Speaker 2: It is and if any you didn't have brain cancer.
Speaker 2: No I didn't. But when I was writing that, I
Speaker 2: thought that I did, and I was feeling well, I'm
Speaker 2: really sorry. There is no reason for me to lie,
Speaker 2: and it's not something I want to be doing either.
Speaker 1: Gibson said she thought she did have cancer because she'd
Speaker 1: been misled by a Charlatan medical who wrongly diagnosed her.
Speaker 2: I wasn't living in a space where I didn't know
Speaker 2: that this wasn't my reality.
Speaker 1: This is the opening line of Apple Side of Vinegar.
Speaker 1: It's spoken by actress Caitlin Deaver, who's playing Gibson. This
Speaker 1: is a true story based on a lie. Some names
Speaker 1: have been changed to protect the innocent. Belle Gibson has
Speaker 1: not been paid for the recreation of her story. Fuckers, Richard,
Speaker 1: have you watched Apple Side of Vinegar and what did
Speaker 1: you think?
Speaker 3: I'm afraid I have watched it. I just really disliked
Speaker 3: the show quite a lot. Actually, I thought it was
Speaker 3: a really terrible misrepresentation of the story and a misrepresentation
Speaker 3: of sort of Belle Gibson and her personality. And I
Speaker 3: thought that some of the fictitious plot elements in there
Speaker 3: were sort of really thickly questionable as well.
Speaker 1: In Apple Side of Vinegar we see a couple of
Speaker 1: crusading journalists who don't work for The Australian. They work
Speaker 1: at the Age in Melbourne.
Speaker 2: It's an article for the Age that a woman faking
Speaker 2: terminal brain cancer, allegedly she's meant to have cured herself using.
Speaker 1: Healthy Netflix based this series on a book written by
Speaker 1: two Age journalists, Nick Toscano and bo Donnelly. So what
Speaker 1: role did they actually have in exposing Gibson and how
Speaker 1: did their work and your work kind of interact in
Speaker 1: those early years.
Speaker 3: Look, those two journalists have basically been claiming for the
Speaker 3: last nine ten years that they exposed Belle Gibson's cancer scam.
Speaker 3: The reality is that they were working on that story
Speaker 3: in Melbourne in twenty fifteen, and as is shown in
Speaker 3: Appleside of Vinegar, they couldn't substantiate that bell Gibson's cancer
Speaker 3: claims were false. So what they did was publish a
Speaker 3: story on page four of The Age which revealed that
Speaker 3: she had raised money for charities and had not donated
Speaker 3: it as she claimed. And I think what they were
Speaker 3: hoping to do was flush out more information to go
Speaker 3: with the cancer angle. But instead what they flushed out
Speaker 3: was my stories. Because I'd been working on a story
Speaker 3: about Bill Gibson for two months, I had interviewed her,
Speaker 3: Unlike them, I discovered all these social media posts that
Speaker 3: she'd been putting up since she was seventeen, sixteen years old,
Speaker 3: in which she claimed to have had open heart surgery
Speaker 3: and died on the operating table. And so we did
Speaker 3: publish immediately the following day, revealing that she had a
Speaker 3: history of basically fraudulent medical claims, and that she'd admitted
Speaker 3: to me that she couldn't substantiate many of her cancer claims,
Speaker 3: and that Penguin Books had never checked her bona fides
Speaker 3: before they published her book, and that was just devastating,
Speaker 3: and she went to ground immediately. She did not deny
Speaker 3: anything in the story, and at that point it became
Speaker 3: quite obvious.
Speaker 1: That she was a fraud.
Speaker 3: We ran a series of stories that week in The
Speaker 3: Australian and her business was pretty much dead by the
Speaker 3: end of the week. And now I was nominated for
Speaker 3: Scoop of the Year in the twenty fifteen Walkleys for
Speaker 3: those stories. And so we see them in this series
Speaker 3: battling away and then triumphantly at the end publishing that
Speaker 3: you know, she's a cancer fraud. So when I say that,
Speaker 3: you know, there are elements of the story that I
Speaker 3: didn't like. That was certainly one of them, you know,
Speaker 3: because it's just completely not true. Obviously, the scriptwriters weren't
Speaker 3: attracted to the idea of a dramatic climax where the
Speaker 3: two reporters get scooped by The Australian. So I can
Speaker 3: see why they went with the angle they went, But still,
Speaker 3: you know it's not true.
Speaker 1: Coming up, So what are the ethics of telling a
Speaker 1: sort of true story on screen? While I've got you?
Speaker 1: It's Valentine's Day, So if you haven't already rushed out
Speaker 1: to buy some chocolates or a bunch of roses, consider
Speaker 1: giving the one you love a subscription to The Australian.
Speaker 1: It's only a dollar a week for the first four weeks.
Speaker 1: But you won't come off as a cheapskate because this
Speaker 1: gift says loud and clear, I respect your intelligence. We'll
Speaker 1: be back after the break. The disclaimer at the beginning
Speaker 1: of Apple Cider Viniges says some names have been changed
Speaker 1: to protect the innocent, and one of those innocent people
Speaker 1: is Jessica Ainsco.
Speaker 4: My name is jess Aysco and I'm here it's talk
Speaker 4: to you about my book Make Peace with Your Plate,
Speaker 4: which has been selling super well and I'm so so
Speaker 4: grateful for that. So today I'm going to talk to
Speaker 4: you about my top five tips for a healthy life
Speaker 4: and healthy body in twenty fourteen. Number one is to
Speaker 4: start your day with lemon juice and.
Speaker 1: Warm water that you have to make sure. She was
Speaker 1: twenty two when diagnosed with an aggressive epithelioid psychoma, so
Speaker 1: jess was advised the best course of action would be
Speaker 1: to amputate her arm. Instead, she decided to try holistic
Speaker 1: therapy and wrote a blog about her life, healthy living,
Speaker 1: and cancer. It became pretty popular. When Jessica's mum got
Speaker 1: breast cancer a few years later, they both tried alternative medicine. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: Jessica's mum succumbed to the cancer and Jessica soon followed.
Speaker 1: She died at the age of twenty nine. If you've
Speaker 1: watched Apple Cider Vinegar, you'll recognize this as the precise
Speaker 1: story of Miller Blake. Perhaps Miller's meant to be an
Speaker 1: amalgamation of wellness influence, but for anyone who knew Jessica,
Speaker 1: they would immediately recognize that this is her life. They're fictionalized,
Speaker 1: and according to her former fiance, Talent Palmenta, it's not
Speaker 1: a fair betrayal. Here's what he said to the Australian
Speaker 1: as read by a voice actor.
Speaker 5: It's a falsified, dramatic, fictional portrayal, which isn't surprising considering
Speaker 5: none of us were ever consulted or referenced for information
Speaker 5: or fact checking. The series insinuates the jess fully shunned
Speaker 5: conventional medicine, which is also incorrect. In fact, she actually
Speaker 5: passed due to complications from conventional radiation therapy, not from
Speaker 5: her cancer spreading or taking action too late, as depicted
Speaker 5: in the media and in the series.
Speaker 1: One of the primary tensions in Apple Cider Vinegar is
Speaker 1: a competitive phre enemy like relationship between Bell Gibson and
Speaker 1: the character portraying Jessica Ansco. It comes to a head
Speaker 1: and Jessica's character Miller, delivers this line.
Speaker 3: I want to destroy her.
Speaker 1: But in reality, Jessica Belly new Bell. They ran in
Speaker 1: the same wellness circles, sure, but there was no bitchy
Speaker 1: back and forth, no plans to destroy one another.
Speaker 5: The fact that this new series puts a fake cancer
Speaker 5: frauds Delight Gibson guilty of misleading and deceptive conduct in
Speaker 5: a court of law in the same storyline as somewhat
Speaker 5: honest and incredible like jess is a massive insult to
Speaker 5: her character and her legacy. It's heartbreaking for everyone who
Speaker 5: knew her.
Speaker 1: Another real life person with reservations about Apple side of
Speaker 1: Vinegar is Chanelle mccauliffe. In real life, McAuliffe was a whistleblower,
Speaker 1: a friend of Bell Gibson who correctly suspected she was
Speaker 1: a fake, but in the show, she's betrayed as also
Speaker 1: being friends with the jess Ainsco character Miller. Here's Chanelle mccauliffe,
Speaker 1: the real one on TikTok.
Speaker 6: I had nothing to do with the Netflix show, and
Speaker 6: I don't entirely feel comfortable around some of the ethics
Speaker 6: of this type of storytelling and how the truth has
Speaker 6: been distorted in the show.
Speaker 3: Spoken to Chanel, and one of the things that she and,
Speaker 3: to be honest, I both were really quite shocked by
Speaker 3: was that the scriptwriters took that jess ains coo story
Speaker 3: of the mother and daughter who've got cancer, and they
Speaker 3: totally replicated everything about it, from the types of cancer
Speaker 3: they had to where they lived and when they died.
Speaker 3: But they changed the name of the character right so
Speaker 3: they call her Miller Blake. But in the script they
Speaker 3: set Bell Gibson and this Miller Blake character up as
Speaker 3: these kind of bitchy rivals, and miller Blake discovers that
Speaker 3: Gibson's are fake and decides to sort of destroy her
Speaker 3: as she's dying. And I just thought, you know, like
Speaker 3: morally and ethically, like the Jesse Ainskoe's family went through
Speaker 3: a terrible tragedy, a mother and daughter dying of cancer
Speaker 3: after rejecting treatment within basically a sort of year of
Speaker 3: each other. The other thing is that I met Bill Gibson,
Speaker 3: and look, her whole persona was. If you've watched the
Speaker 3: sixty Minutes interview, for instance, you'll know that her whole
Speaker 3: persona was this kind of airy earth mother who sort
Speaker 3: of stares off into the distance and is kind of
Speaker 3: have this dreamy slow voice. But in the show, she's
Speaker 3: portrayed as this kind of over caffeinated, foul mouthed, you know,
Speaker 3: negligent mother, and you know, they've set her up as
Speaker 3: this absolute villain, and I just thought it was a
Speaker 3: completely unrealistic portrait. By the end of the show, I
Speaker 3: kind of was wondering, I hope Belle Gibson. I mean,
Speaker 3: I mean, if she's watching this, she's a troubled person
Speaker 3: you know, and she has she has a child. I
Speaker 3: just questioned some of the ethics of that.
Speaker 1: Finally, Richard, your work on this story and a whole
Speaker 1: lot of other stories is the kind of work that
Speaker 1: makes you believe in journalism. Looking back on it all
Speaker 1: these years later, how does it make you feel about
Speaker 1: our craft of journalism.
Speaker 3: Well, Look, I'm incredibly proud of those stories that I wrote.
Speaker 3: Because of all the stories I wrote, that one I
Speaker 3: think had an impact, perhaps beyond anything else I've done,
Speaker 3: just because of her profile and also the issues it raised. Look,
Speaker 3: I used to grind my teeth about those two guys
Speaker 3: down in Melbourne. But there are two documentaries about Belle Gibson.
Speaker 3: One of them is going to actually be on Netflix
Speaker 3: next week. It's called Instagram's Worst con Artist. I'm in
Speaker 3: both of them, and they're barely in them at all,
Speaker 3: and so I kind of think that the record speaks
Speaker 3: for itself for anyone who wants to look at it.
Speaker 1: Richard Gilliot and I worked together a couple of years
Speaker 1: ago on Richard's podcast investigation Shadow of Doubt. It's an
Speaker 1: exploration of the truths and lies in one family where
Speaker 1: a daughter accuses her parents of the most horrendous crimes,
Speaker 1: and Richard's search for certainty. You can binge Shadow of
Speaker 1: Doubt right now, wherever you get your podcasts, and on
Speaker 1: The Australian's mobile app