TV News and Women: Not a pretty picture

Yes, okay—everyone knows Bill O’Reilly is a big old perv. But what the recent sex harassment scandal has also brought to light is just how common this kind of behavior is in TV news.
The New York Observer—in an unfortunately titled article, Revolt of Fox’s Hens—covered just how unfriendly the TV news biz is to women.
Here are some snippets from The Observer’s interviews—and these are just from a few women. Apparently most young women weren’t willing to speak on the record about their experiences.
Lisa Bloom, Court TV anchor: “The television industry in general is rampant with sexual harassment, and it’s very difficult for women at a low level to complain or do anything about it…if you offend the top brass at one TV network, they’re very tight with top brass at other networks. Word will spread, and you’ll have a hard time getting a job.”
A former Fox News staffer: “They love their women dolled up…It’s not saying they don’t like women who aren’t smart. But women at Fox were in trouble if they were on air and they weren’t dressed like a hooker. Everybody at Fox is painfully aware of that.”
A current female producer at CNN: “In the last 10 years or so, it seems there are more and more young, pretty women who are just dying to be on television… and they’ll do anything to get there—among those things, being treated poorly.”
And perhaps one of the more disturbing admissions from a “prominent and current male on-air host”:
At the producing level, it’s all young women, 99 percent of whom have no chance of being on TV. They like being in TV and they like powerful men. Each host has around him lots of good-looking, unmarried women. Women are excited by power, let’s be totally clear. The temptation to fuck your staff is overwhelming—literally, almost overwhelming. You just can’t imagine how sexually out of control it is. A quarter of the women are bisexual. They’re good-looking, they’re totally without restraint…
…You’ve got all the money—in every way, you’re the sheik, they’re the harem. You can’t overstate how true that is. That’s a natural dynamic….
…All they do all day long, they’re job is to serve you…That’s explicitly their job. How you look, how you sound—everything is focused on you.
Ewwwww!
As the article points out, the TV news business sets up this kind of dynamic in a seriously freaky way. A bunch of old guys run the show on all levels, while having a bevy of young (underpaid) women to do their shit work and feed their egos. Sounds like a dream job. Ugh.
Clearly this kind of power imbalance sets the stage for harassment, but that doesn’t mean that we should simply dismiss it as an inevitable part of the business, which—from this article—it seems that many women do.