A Kansas City anchorwoman's legal victory prompts debate
When Judy Woodruff became a TV news anchor in Atlanta in 1972, the station ordered her to cut her shoulder-length hair. Mary Alice Williams was urged in 1979 by NBC's New York station to change her eye color with tinted contact lenses. Dorothy Reed was forbidden in 1980 by ABC's San Francisco station to plait her hair in corn rows. The three women, and many of their counterparts, cheered last week when Christine Craft, 38, won a $500,000 damage verdict against the former owners of a Kansas City station, KMBC, that dropped her as an anchor in 1981. Craft charged that Station Manager R. Kent Replogle told her she was "too old, unattractive and not deferential enough to men."
At first glance, the decision seemed a major victory for the proposition that women deserve to be treated as more than set decoration: a jury of four women and two men found that Metromedia, Inc.* had defrauded Craft by hiring her as a journalist and then attempting to make her over as a camera presence. The jurors also recommended that U.S. District Judge Joseph Stevens find Metromedia guilty of sex discrimination. Said Jury Foreman Kenneth Green: "We hope we have helped women in broadcasting." The case took on a symbolic importance for women's groups, who contributed to help Craft pay her attorney, Dennis Egan. Said Christine Lund, 39, an anchor at Los Angeles' KABC: "This proves that the public is sharper than I ever thought. The case may be appealed, but you cannot unring this bell."
TV executives and law scholars, however, contend that Craft's victory reflected unusual circumstances, and that it will have limited impact on stations' legal freedom to change personnel. The importance of the case, they said, was that it prompted ethical debate about TV's treatment of women and other issues: the rise of show-business values and market research over news judgment; the role of consultants in shaping a newscast's style, cast and content; the concept of anchors as personalities rather than reporters. Those trends started in local news, but are spreading to the networks, according to some reporters. A CBS correspondent complains: "One executive refers to what we do as 'info-tainment.' "