This much we should all be able to agree on. It was despicable for some slug to have secretly videotaped Erin Andrews, ESPN’s attractive sports reporter, through a hotel peephole. And then to up the digital-disgust ante by posting it on YouTube.
And it was unconscionable for the New York Post and CBS News to have shown images from the video.
All kinds of folks – from academia to the media to the Poynter Institute for Media Studies – have weighed in. Particularly notable was a comment by Christine Brennan, a USA Today sports columnist. “Women journalists need to be smart and not play to the frat house,” she opined on Twitter.
That leaves unsaid more than it says. Nobody has to tell, say, Nora O’Donnell of MSNBC, not to flash her political-junkie demographic. She’s a serious journalist who also has the right look. And there are others.
But here we’re talking female sideline reporters. Not to be confused with serious journalists. A position, arguably, that isn’t particularly taxing – or necessary. More to the point, they are hired precisely because of the frat-house demographic, one that, to say the least, definitely transcends the fraternity years. Sexy sideline reporters — the ones who tell us that “It’s rumored that Tim Tebo has a steady girl friend” — are now a TV staple. Networks want babes.
It doesn’t excuse what some creeps might do, but it does explain why some of them watch.