There’s a quiet erosion happening on the red carpet, and it’s time someone said it out loud.
To the Academy Awards and Vanity Fair: stop asking influencers to cover your most prestigious cultural events.
This isn’t about snobbery. It’s about standards.
The red carpet has long been a strange hybrid space – part journalism, part performance, part cultural record. At its best, it captures something fleeting but meaningful: how artists think about their work, how culture reflects the moment, how fame intersects with craft. But increasingly, that space is being flattened into something else entirely – awkward, shallow, and, at times, actively disrespectful.
We’ve now seen enough examples to call it a pattern.
Take Jake Shane, one of several influencers brought in to interview talent at this year’s Vanity Fair Oscars party, alongside Quenlin Blackwell and Brittany Broski. Shane himself has openly admitted that he is not a journalist – and even that calling what he does “journalism” would be insulting to those who are. That level of self-awareness is refreshing. But it also raises a simple question: if not journalism, then why is he being positioned as its replacement?
His interviews offered an answer, though perhaps not the one intended.
While discussing If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, Shane repeatedly asked actors whether they found the sick child at the centre of the story “so annoying.” It’s the kind of question that might land in a private group chat, not on a red carpet hosting Oscar nominees. When Julia Fox attempted to redirect the conversation toward the film’s broader themes – motherhood, societal pressure, structural failure – her nuance was met with a glib punchline: “Julia Fox for president!”
Later, Shane posed the same question again to Damson Idris, as though repetition might substitute for insight.
This is the issue. Not that all influencers are unworthy, or unintelligent, or incapable – but that they are often unprepared for the responsibility they’re being handed. What’s framed as “fresh energy” too often becomes a lack of curiosity, a lack of listening, and a lack of respect for both the work and the moment.
And it matters.
Because these aren’t just parties. These are industry-defining events. They are one of the few remaining spaces where art, celebrity, and public discourse intersect in real time. When the questions stop meaning anything, the moment does too.
I say this not as an outsider throwing stones, but as a working journalist.
I’ve built my career on interviews that aim to do both: to inform and to feel like a conversation. To be engaging without being empty. To allow space for personality without sacrificing substance. That balance is the craft. It takes time, practice, and, above all, respect for the person on the other side of the question.
And yes – I don’t have a massive following.
But following should not be mistaken for fluency.
We don’t apply that logic anywhere else. Films can underperform at the box office and still be recognised as the best of the year. Unknown actors can deliver career-defining performances. Emerging directors can reshape the industry. So why, on the red carpet, has reach become more valuable than ability?
The current system rewards visibility over skill. It prioritises viral moments over meaningful ones. And in doing so, it diminishes a profession that, when done well, elevates the very artists these events are meant to celebrate.
This is an open letter, but it’s also an offer.
Give journalists – especially those without built-in audiences – the opportunity to prove that red carpet coverage can be both compelling and considered. That interviews can be light without being trivial. That conversations can be entertaining without being empty.
Because right now, the bar isn’t just low – it’s being lowered.
And the people who deserve better aren’t just the journalists.
They’re the artists.
Sincerely,
A journalist who still believes the question matters.
