Sex Sells and Distracts

In class this week, we watched a clip of an interview from CNN between a woman anchor and a male senator. We observed that, since the male senator was not physically present in the CNN studio, the screen only showed the upper half of his body. However, the woman anchor was standing at a certain angle facing the senator's screen, with her whole body in view. We agreed as a class that the woman was attractive and that perhaps her positioning and the camera angle was planned purposely.

I recently stumbled on an article by Miller-McCune which addresses this exact issue. "Sexy news anchors." In the article, the author states that, "To capture male viewers, news networks have hired attractive female anchors. While it may boost ratings, studies show male viewers get distracted and remember less from the newscast."

The article continues with "Two Indiana University scholars report that, for male viewers, 'emphasis on the sexual attractiveness of female news anchors distracts from memory formation for news content.'"

"They found that 'men’s cognitive mechanisms favored visual over verbal processing.'" So basically the men are more focused on the anchor's appearance than what she was actually saying.

What's the point of having a news cast if half of the viewers don't even completely comprehend what's going on? I understand if networks are competing with one another for ratings, but I feel as if this takes away from the whole purpose of "the news." Perhaps, this is why Americans are so poorly informed of the world around them.

The news have become more about who has the hotter anchor than who delivers the best news coverage. Maybe these women are extremely qualified and deserve the job, but I think its the network's fault for how they objectify them. Furthermore, I think it says more about how looks are extremely important in our society. God forbid we have an ugly news anchor.