There’s something strange occurring in newsrooms all around the country and it’s especially noticeable in television. While drama shows like “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Law and Order” portray women as high-powered surgeons and cops or lawyers, down on the newsroom floor, where television is truly real, it’s depressingly revisionist.
And, for the sake of this blog, let’s put aside the fact that the upper echelons of newsroom management have been barely visited, let alone conquered, by women in any medium.
What’s more disturbing in television is the changing criteria for hiring women reporters and presenters – and what that means for you and I, the viewer.
Over at the State Broadcaster, the little-head-making-decisions-for-the-big-head rules ok with, on “Breakfast”, a string of women who look better than their stories (which are execrable).
The one exception here is Charlotte Bellis from Christchurch who seems to have got off her chuff and stopped the tits-and-teeth smirking and got out there and told me something I hadn’t heard before. After all, it is called news.
The rest belong to that inglorious group, the Pick Me Tribe. These are the prancers who endlessly pick up stories from the front page of that day’s Herald and simperingly regurgitate it on camera. What did they learn at ‘varsity or tech? There’s no doubt they’ve learnt to “walk and talk at the same time”. It just seems that any talking will do as long as it’s All About You.
Across the road at TV3 it’s not much better. Earlier this year it was suggested to senior current affairs journalist, Mel Reid from 60 Minutes, that maybe she was a little ‘old’ to be on camera and maybe she should consider an off-camera role.
Fortunately, the bearer of that news, so-called hatchet man Ian Audsley was himself axed and she continues to report stories.
The fact that Reid and Amanda Millar are still on camera says something about 3News.
But why is that age group only represented in 60 Minutes? Where are the senior women in news, not to mention “Nightline”?
If it’s good enough to have 3News reporter Bob McNeill on the payroll for the past 20 years, then why not a Roberta McNeill?
It’s even worse on “Nightline”. The 20th anniversary show highlighted a trail of bland female presenters, (oh, and one uptight Old Trout – me) who looked fabulous but whose journalism for the most part (notable exception, the present incumbent Rachel Smalley) was entirely forgettable.
That’s what happens when news bosses call female reporters “eye candy”.
Eye Candy; attracting an audience but not necessarily a story
This treatment of women on our screens, both in fictional and real form, has caught the eye of one Susan J. Douglas.
Her recently published book “Enlightened Sexism” describes TV as a powerful medium that shapes people’s views and creates “embedded feminism” – a false impression that equality has been won.
Which creates another paradox; while telly’s fictional characters are powerful and in control, the non-fictional ones (for instance, those washed up on the shores of reality TV) are “shallow, materialistic, obsessed with guys they barely knew, involved in cat fights.”
And that’s the point when it comes to some female reporters. They’re not there because they can do the job better than anyone else; sniff a story out at ten paces or craft a yarn that makes us think. They’re there because they simply LOOK good. Try contrasting that with female reporters in the American networks who aren’t considered up-to-speed journalistically til they’re approaching middle-age.
And that’s the point. Good newsrooms reflect the communities they serve. And when they don’t, viewers simply go elsewhere.
And, sadly, they are.
@ Emma
“Yes, I did note his enormous clock. Women usually do”.
Mmm….I can see, that your febrile mind has taken a wander, down into the ‘Avenue of the Double Entrendre’
To Ava:
1983, from memory. Then we shifted around the corner. Nothing to do with little little Jack, who is older than he looks.
I thought about this blog overnight. (I know, it was good to see the All Blacks sicking it to the much-cliched Old Foe … , kept me awake a bit.)
The trouble is that Janet Wilson does not tell us whom she means. Presumably we are all meant to know. And is it only blondes?
As the father of daughters who are blondes (and I hastily add self-preservatedly and cravenly that neither is dumb nor stupid) I do take exception to the often-careless portrayal of blonde women as dumb.
I stopped taking a lot of interest in television news in 1989. That’s about when the ads came in, when TVNZ’s image people apparently seized control of the on-air ‘look’, when image became everything, when TVNZ spent money on ‘Look at us, look at us!’self-promotion that could have gone into journalism, when TVNZ News stopped, I believe, taking its job seriously as a carrier of news (that which is interesting and important to people) to the public.
I did have my hopes raised briefly when Bill Ralston was appointed Honca (dreadful acronym for Head of News and Current Affairs) and said he was going to tackle the ‘star’ system. Good, I thought, because I saw no reason for television reporters’ lives to be dramatised breathlessly and airbushedly in the women’s magazines. I saw no reason for anyone to be earning $800,000+ for reading the news (all right, it was done according to the conventions of the particular game, and good on her that she was able to get it), nor someone getting $350,000 (or was it $450,000?) for simply being the face of a nightly current affairs programme.
But I have to say that I otherwise saw no particular reason then to stop what I was doing to watch the 6pm News unless by then I had tea on the table.
I’ve always been a newspaper reader — and for nearly 20 years I worked on them. The internet has opened up an almost limitless supply of news from different sources. And some of those sources are unexpectely good. Indian newspapers such as The Hindu and the The Hindustan Times, Radio Netherlands, Deutsche Welle, Canadian papers such as The Globe and Mail (Toronto), and The Gazette (Montreal). If you can see past some of the obvious biases in The New York Times you will spot good examples of writing.
The Otago Daily Times recently had a very good editorial about TVNZ, about how it has infantilised the news, about how, if you want to know about what’s going on in the world, you’re not going to learn much from TVNZ.
[...] TV reporter, now media trainer, Janet Wilson, caused a small fuss when her blog post Eye Candy was reported in Saturday’s New Zealand Herald by James Ihaka. Of course one could observe (a [...]
Sorry Janet, think you’ve got it wrong here. Using breakfast as an example I think they’ve got a great mix of people. When you look at Pippa, Alli Pugh, Charlotte(agreed), Corrin Dan etc, sure they’re attractive but they’ve also got personality which is the key ingrediant. I don’t know you or what you look like but maybe you and others like you are better jounalists but that doesn’t mean the viewers want to see you(or others) dron on with well researched facts. I love watching the breckfast crew for their friendly, laid back attitudes. When I want to watch well trained and researched journalists, I’ll watch 60 minutes, Sunday etc but for me(and I’m sure many others) personality is more important. What I see in your article is a degree of envy and a lack of realisation that the market gets what the market demands.
TV3 did hire Patrick Gower – surely that’s the best counter to Janet’s argument?
Janet
As a former NZ TV presenter and journalist now living in Australia, I’m so relieved to find it’s not just me who believes the Eye Candy mentality exists. But believe me when I say, Australia is WORSE!!!! The botoxed, expressionless, blonde women who ‘read’ the news is depressing and bland to say the leaset. Thanks for having the courage to speak up.
well said janet theres no good news reporters anymore cept the few you mentioned and possibly a few more I like charlotte she has the right qualification to be on television i won’t say what i really think because its all negative stick to the news n not who looks good!!
It all went horribly wrong, starting with Judy Bailey. TVNZ built her up to be regarded as the “Mother of the Nation”. Just how friggin’ ridiculous is that? An auto-cue newsreader, being revered as the Mother of the Nation.
As if we needed Judy to emote the news, because we didn’t know how to emotionally respond, unless she did it for us.
And, sorry, but Bill Ralston saw her value as being $800K. Billy said — that obscene salary was her going “market rate”. And he was scared of losing her, lest she was about to be poached by Sky TV or TV3. Yeah, right. They would have passed on her at a third of that price. But Billy was intoxicated by the rarefied air, of having his head in the clouds. From that moment on, we the viewers, were portrayed as witless, because Judy inflected the news for us. I could never understand that, when her voice was so unyielding and strident.
What are we doing, giving celebrity status to announcers and commentators, anyway. Especially, when they are so mediocre.
Several of the blonde journalists you mention on TV1′s Breakfast are very intelligent, doing very well academically at university, and I know because i was there with them. They are not just tits and teeth. They may possess both but also have brains – they just haven’t had a chance to show them yet. They are learning their trade and it’s not their fault that they’re 24 and getting their start in an industry that puts them on the baby steps of Breakfast before moving them on to other timeslots. breakfast isn’t designed for hard breaking news in the morning. Give them time. Your comments are just as offensive if you’d described them as ugly.
I’m with Janet on this. New Zealands media has taken a Titanic nose dive over the last twenty years, the reporting has become universally glib, tabloid and shallow. Modern journo’s have numerous options for tracking down leads, but sadly most opt for the AP, and parrot some Murdoch by-line, written by a hack in some satanic rumour mill. Add to that a vacuous, nasal, coiffed chic, and we have a parody – of a parody – of journalism. Janet, you were always worth watching, gladly you have a presence on the Net, which is typically where I chase down my rumors. Corporate media world wide is zombie media, the thinking Human, switches the telly off. Radio barely cuts it, if at all.
During the copenhagen circus, TV3 had numerous occassions to challenge the prevailing IPCC view, but all its lip glossed shemale did, was pout and mew about KARBEN, GLAYSHELIAS, and POLAH BARES. No balance and no talent.
Stick it to them Janet, you’re onto a winner.
I, being devorced from all the backroom antics and lip smacking greasey beggers for positions, am totally discusted with 90% of the news that covers my screen every night. It’s perhaps is not so much the face in front of me, but rather the content. Is the content indeed sorted and written by the news reader? I have met personally only one news reader. A maori fella from Christchurch. Mike McRoberts is my knid of news hero. He is articulate, well read, and brainy as.
Being a bloke I like to see a pretty face on the screen. But mostly this is for porn, not the news. You got it right about that bird down in Christchurch. Sure she’s pretty, but there is something else in there, not just the content she reports on. I will be watching Charlotte Bellis closely.
As for Pretzel the baby making blonde from TVNZ’s breakfast, there’s something taking her mojo away. It may just be the rugrat growing in her guts, or it could be Paul Henry has broken her, finally. She was pretty, but that fat around her neck turns me off. I wonder if she’ll be hosting Sunday now the blonde dude’s quit?
I miss Janet Wilson, I miss real reporters getting their fingers dirty scratching out a story. A story we aint herd before.
The internet age has killed old news.
Looks like TVNZ’s head of news, has taken a swipe at your blog. Cameron Bennett’s “resigning” (euphemism for the DCM) in favour of soon-to-be, Mother of Three. Best, not write about purty young things, no more.
“Ian Sinclair” — you reading, this? Haven’t forgotten how to play the flamenco guitar, have you?
Most interesting Janet – and that you were widely cited over the weekend and since shows you touched a nerve. I was surprpised that you noted Rachel Smalley as an ‘exception’ to the air-head/T&T syndrome, but what about that lady’s excruciatingly botoxed look. Cher wouldn’t be disgraced, or am I being just a bit too snide here? Beautifully made up – can smile -stands even, but that painted doll tight-stretched reliance on ‘work done’ is further evidence that no-one, (it seems) is allowed to have a face that expresses which is helpful even if they’re given crap to auto-cue off.
Doesn’t the eye candy problem solve itself as more journalists control their own blogs?
@ TJ Walker: Anyone who can work out what this dude is on about, gets the cigar.
Here,here. A point well made. I will stick to the BBC, as far as I am concerned, the standard in objective reporting of news and current events.
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[...] even venture there). Ex-journalist Janet Wilson caused a bit of a furore earlier this year when she blogged on the matter, accusing female telly reporters of being “all tits and teeth” while, looks and age [...]
woah – sounds like sour grapes : perhaps motivated by Ralston’s dalliances with young female journos…
Easy targets young journos. Many who, in recent times, have acted with notable sensitivity and class under incredibly challenging circumstances in Christchurch. This kind of talk is exactly what helps make television such a toxic environment. These young women do well to survive.
So speaks a long past it, bitter old woman who never really was any good when she was on the news 20 years ago. I sugest that she find another line of work.
The stories done by Charlotte Bellis, Alison Pugh, Ruth WynnWilliams over the past twelve months have been gritty, necessary and heartbreaking – things like Pike River, Chch 1, 2 and 3.
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