Kyle Hunter, a television weatherman, has sued CBS for sex and age discrimination for what he claims is an overriding preference given to young attractive women to give the weather forecasts. We have followed this controversy in earlier stories over whether attractive looks can be an appropriate (even an overriding) criteria for anchors, waitresses, or other professions. Hunter insists that he encountered a cold front at every term.
What is different about this lawsuit is that we have previously seen women anchors sue over such discrimination.
Hunter was a weatherman for Fox5 in San Diego but says that his gender and age has effectively barred him from the air. He is suing for unfair discrimination under California employment law on the basis of gender.
However, he alleges that he was only passed over twice for positions. He alleges that he was not even given an interview for either job despite strong credentials. Yet, his complaint insists that the stations “only want attractive young women, and only attractive young women, broadcasting the weather.”
This issue has long intrigued me. Most anchors and television personalities are attractive people. They are often revealed to abroad as mere “news readers.” It seems an act of tremendous willful blindness to ignore that looks are an obvious advantage for such work. Hunter himself is attractive and likely was preferred to less striking candidates in his earlier positions. The question is whether restaurants, news organizations, and shops should be able to openly hire people for their looks or gender as better for business. Actors and actresses are picked for their looks to pull people into theaters. Why can’t television studios do the same? Anchor positions and other television spots have never gone to the most qualified journalists . . . hence the expression “I have a face for radio.”
The obvious concern is a slippery slope. If a business can prefer women to work at Victoria’s Secret, can they openly prefer attractive young women or bar types of religious garb? What about restaurants like Hooter’s that draw customers in part on the promise of young attractive waitresses? We have seen such lawsuits even from strippers who are hired entirely for their looks.
We have long recognized the existence of bona fide employment qualifications, but we have danced around questions over whether businesses can prefer attractiveness and gender as more compelling images for attracting customers.
In the case of on-air forecasters, they are hired for their skills but work with a larger staff and often repeated independently generated data. They, like other television personalities, are expected to “connect” with viewers, particularly among the critical demographic audience. However, if you accept this reality, you must face the question of social judgments that differentiate between gender. Women anchors have long objected that studios reflect a social preference for younger women but not necessarily younger male anchors.
The one thing that is clear is that such judgments should never be applied to law professors where we only improve with age like fine wine.
While CBS is denying such discrimination, it is widely viewed as the standard in the industry. No one would argue that Chelsea Clinton was renewed as a journalist with NBC based on her skills or experience or perceived talents. She was renewed because she was a celebrity draw from the right demographic niche.
What do you think about the right of studios to such criteria as age and gender in selecting television personalities?
Of course, younger weathermen might need a bit of maturing in the job:
Source: Daily Mail
Gunderson
The government of the United States has EVERY right to enforce the values of liberty and equality established for us by the US Constitution. Those values and our insistance they be accepted and rigorously enforced by and for all Americans are what constitutes American exceptionalism.
LottaKatz,
Have you read my post to you above? You should have.
Then I presume you can’t or won’t answer whether you are accusing me of being deceitful etc here Well, do you?
Tony C: “But what if the station thinks credentials do not matter at all? What if their polls and studies indicate that credentials do not matter at all?”
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Well, at what point does a preference become a discriminatory act that is actionable? Having no credentials is as much as a slippery slope as having credentials that are too narrow, or more to the point, narrow to the extent that they disproportionately favor one sex or race or religion etc. No credentials can easily give rise to subconscious impulses to discriminate.
That’s why I said they need to have some kind of criterion. The demographic of their viewers would be a good, business related reason to base a choice on. I have every confidence that there are no credentials for a weather-reader required except read a teleprompter, be presentable, appeal to the audience demographic, whatever that viewer demo may be.
The entertainment industry, even at the level of weather-reading, may well be an industry that has an automatic pass when it come to many forms of discrimination. I think that breaks down though when there are no criteria of any sort to be applied to a decision and you have a station manager that could say- ‘we have no hiring criteria here and I hire females for everything because I like females.’ Or Caucasians, or African Americans, or males. CBS is probably safe as long as they can articulate a good business reason for wanting a female in the job like, ‘our demographic likes females, it brings viewership.’
And if Mike S. is here, go there as well to answer my questions to you too.
http://jonathanturley.org/2012/03/18/professor-defends-sandra-fluke-as-mere-extortionist-or-prostitute-not-slut-students-react-creatively/#comment-345657
LOTTAKATZ,
Go here and answer my questions. You have cranked me seriously.
http://jonathanturley.org/2012/03/18/professor-defends-sandra-fluke-as-mere-extortionist-or-prostitute-not-slut-students-react-creatively/#comment-345657
Roger Gundeson:
We all appreciate that moving portrayal of 19th Century thinking on the issue of racial, sexual, gender, and age discrimination in employment. Did you type it while whistling “Dixie.” dressed in “black face,” tap dancing, and doing your “mammy” government imitation, too?
How we luv ya? How we luv ya?
Bron1, March 19, 2012 at 2:52 pm
…”You kind of wonder why real wages for workers doubled in the 1800′s when employers were basically able to hire and fire at will and now real wages are in the toilet.”
—————–
oh please. Maybe that was the case in the 1800’s but, despite the efforts of the Fundy right and Corporate evil doers, we are not kicked back to there quite yet……
Stagnant wages coupled with corruption and CEO rape of the trusting American public have and will take a toll. It’s nothing new…and your statement being wrong…that’s nothing new either . 😉
All weathermen/women lie. It’s a grand conspiracy. I take an umbrella and it doesn’t rain. I put on boots and mittens and it doesn’t snow. I plan an outdoor garden party and a tornado drops by. It’s a sick, sick conspiracy.
Now global warming … (chuckle, chuckle … gotta go)
Oro Lee, LOL, Les Nessman is THE MAN! Thanks. 🙂
But what if the station thinks credentials do not matter at all? What if their polls and studies indicate that credentials do not matter at all?
A thousand people will apply to have the insanely easy job of reading the weather in front of a camera, so if credentials, degrees, schooling and intelligence are not necessary to do the job, how should the station decide which ONE of the thousand should get the job?
Why hire a meteorologist? They may already have one, or a firm that provides their meteorological expertise and forecast, and writes their script.
If credentials are meaningless to their viewers, the obvious solution for a media outlet in the business of presentation is to find a presenter their viewers like to look at.
The TV and movie industry aren’t filled with pretty actresses for nothing, they are there because attractive women really do attract viewers, and producers know that.
Plus it is harmless; why does anybody care if somebody they do not know is leering at a woman on TV they do not know, and she volunteered for the eye candy position? I do not understand why anybody thinks this particular decision needs to be neutral, when there is really no objective criteria to consult and the subjective criteria of appearance, presentation, voice, energy and likability have GOT to be considered.
roger gunderson:
are you serious?
By the way Thomas Sowell thinks the same way. In fact he says that government caused racism in the south by making the laws they did.
That is how it was in the past. You kind of wonder why real wages for workers doubled in the 1800’s when employers were basically able to hire and fire at will and now real wages are in the toilet.
I have been discriminated against [fired, canned, axed] a couple of times for health reasons and all I say is go f&%$#@ yourself and good riddance to bad rubbish. I have a better life now than I ever would have if I hadnt been fired. I’d still be making sh!@#% for money and have no time for myself and always be at the boss’s beck and call. Just call me Step and Fetch It.
Most people have been sold a bill of goods, they like the security of 9-5 when in reality there is no security in 9-5. The only real security is yourself. If more people would realize the corporate world is killing them and start small businesses of their own, this would be a lot better country all around.
A business gets too big and then something happens to it. One company I worked for gave good raises and had a very good retirement plan and people liked their jobs. It grew and hired a corporate CEO to run day to day operations and the owner stepped back. It just became another corporation which caused gastric distress, literally.
I prefer to get my weather forecasts from the radio
The fact that he is youthful and good looking does undercut his argument. CBS may well have a bias toward females for their weather-reader positions. I don’t like the concept of trading on sex when there is no compelling reason to do so. Victoria’s Secret may have a compelling, economically based reason for having female floor staff, but weather-readers? I don’t see it. But I think it’s such a diminished standard (Can read a teleprompter, presentable.) that some reason for the preference should be demonstrable. Otherwise it is sexism and possibly discriminatory.
A couple of the stations in my neck of the woods tout the fact that they have meteorologists that do their own analysis and forecasting. If the position advertised was for a meteorologist and a male with a good history of education and forecasting was passed over for younger and pretty females that had fewer credentials I could see a much stronger complaint though. Likewise if the sexes were reversed, or if race was a factor.
I’m so sick of Hollywood prettying up everything to the point of pablum.
Presentable is far from ‘perfect’….give me personality and spare the bust!
It’s like which ‘Cracker’ would you want to watch…the original Brit version or the prettied up Americanized one?
@Gunderson: Who is the government to tell businesses what to do
What makes business so special that they should be immunized from majority rule? When the majority of people decides some business practice is harming people, the majority can pass a law to prevent it.
I’d like to see how he looks in a bikini before answering.
I believe the answer is extremely easy. Let all businesses hire and fire anybody they want. Discrimination makes perfect sense to me. Who is the government to tell businesses what to do. Government has no place in businesses. If I owned a business, I want to hire and fire who I want. If I owned a restaurant, I want to have the right to choose who I want to serve or not to serve. If I owned a hotel, I want the right to choose who stays and who don’t. I want to discriminate who I want to marry. I want to discriminate who my friends are. I want to discriminate what college I go to as they discriminate who they let in. We are supposed to discriminate. It’s part of our natural rights. I don’t want mammy and daddy government telling me who I can discriminate. It’s my life so leave me alone.
I, for one, have no problem with attractiveness or gender being a qualifying characteristic of somebody whose main job is to be seen.
The truth is the “qualifications” for these jobs are really just the ability to read a script, sound natural doing it, and finish it on time to the second. Often with no rehearsal.
This is not a natural skill held by everyone, by the way, but it is not rare, so once that threshold is met there is very little remaining in the “skill” box to distinguish between dozens of applicants except the OTHER important quality: Camera presence. They have to appear personable, without sweating under lights, their body language has to be right. Youth and attractiveness and being a female helps, we subsconsciously cut people slack for all three of those things.
For men, people subconsciously defer to “seniority,” and baritones, so those help sell an anchor.
I do not frequent Hooters, or strip clubs, but I see no reason why such establishments should be prohibited from defining an audience and putting on a show for them.
My daughter earned money as a print and runway model while attending college; I do not see why it should be okay to restrict employment to very attractive women in the model case, (where their clothing choices are also dictated, and often revealing), but not in the case where they also serve wings and beer.
Sexy weather is an interesting concept.
When this dog is sitting at the counter next my my pal (never call him an owner) at Hooters we watch the weather station on tv with the sound down. There is an announcer there who has a twin who works at the same Hooters.
It is great fun to walk in and ask her the forecast.
This guy ought to get out of television if he thinks his brain matters or talents other than his appearance and his accent.