Much has been made about the curious “coincidence” that almost every female Fox News anchor is a young, attractive blond. I’m sure there is an innocent explanation for it. But anyone at Fox who complains about them being characterized as eye candy hired to exploit their sexuality had better first take a look at Megyn Kelly’s new spread for GQ Magazine. It’s not exactly a play for journalistic integrity.
Setting aside the cheesecake, Kelly is hardly a journalist. She makes headlines out of trivialities and seeks to sensationalize items that would be cut from the National Enquirer. Her stories about the New Black Panther Party never put into context that they were a tiny band of gadflies that no one took seriously. Her reports on the financing of the non-mosque that was not at ground zero were embarrassingly devoid of any evidence of the allegations she made. If you’re wondering why she hasn’t reported on that lately, it may be because her correspondent for the story, Charles Leaf, is in jail awaiting trial for sexually assaulting a four year old girl.
The feature in GQ includes an interview wherein Kelly reveals how seriously she takes her job as a journalist:
GQ: You sit behind a glass table that shows off your legs.
Kelly: Well, It’s a visual business. People want to see the anchor.
That must be why Bill O’Reilly wears those low-cut blouses. In another example of her commitment to news, she was asked…
GQ: Do you think the act of deciding what to cover and what not to is in itself a political act?
Kelly: It’s not political. Television is a service but it’s also a business. And in choosing what you’re going to put on your program, you have to figure out what’s going to appeal to your audience and what’s going to rate.
That explains the incessant bashing of liberals as well as the glass table. But how pathetic that she anchors a so-called news show and thinks that ratings should be the measure of what constitutes news. She goes on to boast about Fox being the number one cable news channel. But somehow she is not familiar with her colleagues on the network. She asserts that “I really don’t know much about the Glenn Beck empire.” However, she supports his right to free speech. To this GQ asked…
GQ: There’s the First Amendment and then there’s spreading obvious misinformation.
Kelly: That happens at a lot of channels. I think some of those allegations against Beck may have foundation and that some are blown up by detractors.
GQ: Which allegations have foundation?
Kelly: I’m not going to get into specifics.
That’s swell. Kelly just declared that at least some of the allegations about Beck spreading misinformation are true. Let that sink in for a minute. One news network anchor is accusing her colleague of saying things on the air that are obviously false. Can you imagine the uproar if Anderson Cooper were to have said that about Wolf Blitzer? But my guess is that no one will even notice this. After all, everybody expects to be misinformed if they’re watching Fox News. It hardly matters if it’s Beck or Kelly or Hannity or Cavuto or O’Reilly. In fact, Kelly can hardly complain because she is just as guilty as Beck of misinforming her audience.
I suppose that if you believe that misinforming viewers is no big deal, and that ratings should decide news content, and that partisan, sensationalism is a reasonable substitute for honest reporting, then it shouldn’t surprise anyone when you pose for risque centerfolds for men’s magazines. Just please don’t ask to be taken seriously as a journalist.
All of the news networks use attractive ladies to report the news. If anything they show off a lot less of Megyn’s legs than they once did. Infact you see more skin from several of the other ladies on Fox and like I said other networks also.
Personally I liked the set-up with Megyn and Bill Hemmer better than the current America Live program. Megyn has her ways. You can watch her if you like. If you don’t there are other networks to watch.
What really stirred up the hornets nest here is that she did this interview for GQ. They chose her. She did the interview and answered their questions. She showed some skin and that’s what GQ wanted. It was an opportunity which was presented to her and she took it and I for one am very happy she did. If you were in her position you would have done the same.
Megyn is a very beautiful and talented lady who is in a buisness where ratings are the bottom line. Fox’s ratings are on the top and some of that is because of Megyn. GQ chose her and I’m sure they believe she will sell magazines for them by doing this and I know she will. Congratulations Megyn for being a talented and beautiful lady.
Wow. This apologist is more depressing than the interview.
That’s just what I was thinking.
“All of the news networks use attractive ladies to report the news.”
I’m sure that Candy Crowley and Andrea Mitchell will appreciate your compliment.
As for Kelly, I have no problem with her doing the interview, but she did not have to agree to the pin-up pictures. If she were a serious news professional she would not have done that.
Lara Logan of CBS is (in my opinion) even more attractive than Kelly. In fact, she was once a swimsuit model. But she would never do that now. She has respect for her role as a reporter and she expects to treated as a professional. It’s not really a fair comparison because Logan is a real journalist who has reported from war zones, while Kelly is a news reader who has never left the comfort of her Manhattan studio.
The bottom line is that journalists put their work first and, while ratings matter, they do not take priority over substance. Knowledge, insight, and skill are the qualities that define journalists not how they look in a bathing suit. If that were so the news networks could just hire Sports Illustrated models.
But the worst part of the interview was not the photos, it was her answers. What kind of news network tolerates anchors who “spread obvious misinformation?”
Mark,
There are only a couple comments that offer any justification for your comments….. If your ignorance and narrow minded thoughts could be outweighed, it would only be by your chauvanism. How is it that according to your logic that an interview/article accompanied by a photo spread, albeit provacative disqualifies a person as a journalist. Oh, I apologise, you did also add the necessity of reporting within a warzone to be a a requirement. Wow, you must have quite a resume of your own to draw such conclusions of Ms Kelly’s reputation, ability and qualifications to host a “News Magazine” type program. Your typical liberal statement of the journalists should have knowledge of, “offer insight”…… “Real” journalists don’t offer opinions or personal insight, they report. Wouldn’t be difficult to imagine you standing in that voting booth in 2012 still blaming Bush……..
I never said that the interview/photos disqualify Kelly as a journalist. I said that she wasn’t a journalist to begin with. Her disrespect for practices and standards of ethical journalism, are what disqualifies her.
I also never said that reporting within a war zone was a requirement for anything. I just used that as a single example in my comparison of Kelly’s lack of experience to Logan’s long resume and abundant credibility. However, having worked as an actual reporter ought to be a requirement for anchoring a news program.
And Kelly does not host a “news magazine.” Her program is in the heart of the news day that Fox defines as their hard news programming.
But thanks for visiting and misreading everything I wrote. And, you’re correct, I do still blame Bush. His incompetence and lies resulted in major catastrophes that do not disappear overnight. Just ask the survivors of the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis whose loved ones are still dead due to Bush’s unnecessary and illegal war. Or ask the millions of Americans who are still unemployed due to Bush’s economic policies.
Oh Gawd, not the everybody does it excuse, the ultimate insult on the original injury. Give her a few years – and a few after that – and maybe, with some perspective, she’ll find out just how true it is that there’s nothing new under the proverbial sun. But I’m not counting on it. Her one-two punch act, no matter how old and tiresome it’s grown through the ages, still fools the fools, and I suppose it always will.
Television is a service but it’s also a business. And in choosing what you’re going to put on your program, you have to figure out what’s going to appeal to your audience and what’s going to rate.
But news stories often take unanticipated twists and turns, and therefore it doesn’t make much sense to “figure out what’s going to appeal to your audience” when a story headed for resolution X concludes with resolution Y. Furthermore, as long as you give your audience mindless T&A… after awhile that’s all they’ll ever want.
Excellent point. Recall Balloon boy. I also wrote about a story Kelly did where she made accusations about the HHS. Turned out none of it was true and her own colleague Bret Baier came on to debunk it a half hour later. That’s what happens when you put your perceived desires of the audience before journalistic standards.
Conservative women, not only smarter but more attractive. Would anyone ask Rachel Madcow to pose for anything but a firing squad?
Conservative commenters, not only ignorant but sexist and violent.
and with highly skewed priorities.
Mark, I thought that was pretty funny. Certainly not nice and pretty darn disrespectful, but no worse than so much other “comedy” here.
Mark you gotta be gay!Your choice,watch that “real” journalist/reporter Rachel “always mad” Maddow or that stunning and has no opinion Andra Mitchell or that “Bobble Head” DEER IN THE HEADLITES look on her face when a question someone over the age of 10 would understand Mika B
Thanks Dick…… There a little perspective these liberals can comprehend!!!!!!
Wow Dick, looks like you need to go back to school.
Headlites???? HUH?
“Rachel Madcow”, “Keith Blowbermann”, etc., so on, ad nauseam.
Smart-aleck commentary about firing squads. Attempts to declare liberalism as a “mental disorder” and so on.
Fox peddles stupidity, and the moronic masses who’ve been mind-screwed by this propaganda network defend it by acting like spoiled 6-year-olds who just got a world-class wedgie from a bigger kid on the schoolyard.
The Fairness Doctrine was, to an extent, a law designed to keep America’s news media from becoming a “propaganda tool for one side of the political argument”. When it was repealed by Reagan’s FCC in 1987, it was the equivalent of opening Pandora’s Box. It’s gonna take a whole lot of work to repair the damage that Fox News and the Limbaughs, Hannitys, Becks, Savages, Coulters, Malkins and Megyn Kellys of the world have inflicted on 25 percent of our nation’s people.
“…not only ignorant but sexist and violent…”
Oh, like Kathy Griffin, who once said she wanted to “push Sarah Palin down the stairs”?
Look, that commenter spouted idiotic, violent crap, but don’t do a high-and-mighty and pretend that left-wingers are pure as driven snow when it comes to comments.
One can debate the appropriateness of this GQ photo shoot, but get this clear: Megyn Kelly is a journalist. Period.
seriously? a comedian? Kathy griffin didn’t come on this website and say she wanted to do that…that guy did.
‘Oh yeah?? Well someone else on the other side did it too. You can’t point out someone’s stupid and violently hateful comment as being such without pointing out that the other side does it too!! IT’S NOT FAIR!! WWHHAAAAA!!!’
I weep for the future generations. Idiocracy will come true, just wait.
Don’t bother Scott, this is a liberal oasis where only conservatives are haters and libs like to stand in judgement over the rest of the country. separate yourself from this website now or you may find yourself addicted. I’m working on my own program to stop, but I’m just find the stuff here too much fun to read.
Every time I reach the comment section of any blog like this, the first “conservative” and their six-year-old level comments brings to mind the very end of Joe Walsh’s Life’s Been Good”: 10 seconds after the last note fades out, Walsh says the words that describe the modern-day right wing to a “T”:
“Oh-oh. Here comes a flock of WAH-WAHS!!”
As for Kelly, I have no problem with her doing the interview, but she did not have to agree to the pin-up pictures. If she were a serious news professional she would not have done that.
Did she pose for GQ or did they just have Brit Hume drop off some of his personal polaroids?
Kelly: It’s not political. Television is a service but it’s also a business. And in choosing what you’re going to put on your program, you have to figure out what’s going to appeal to your audience and what’s going to rate.
Did she just admit that the slogan “We report, You decide” is actually a Lie?
Sounds like “she/they” decide what the audience wants to hear based on preconceived biases, not on any newsworthy unbiased journalistic standards.
“We decide, what you need/want to hear”there, I corrected that!
“…or did they just have Brit Hume drop off some of his personal polaroids?…”
As usual, people like Sandman like to wallow in lies and idiotic rumors.
If you bothered to read the interview you would know that Kelly was the one who brought up the rumors about her and Hume, and even said that she wanted them to go on longer than they did.
Before you call people liars and idiots you ought to know what you’re talking about. Otherwise it just makes you look like an idiot.
Sparky,
If you would have read the article, You’d have seen the she was responding to a question from the interviewer regarding Brit Hume. She originally brought up his name, relating the story when she was hired at Fox. The INTERVIEWER then brought up the question of the affair, not her.
Look familiar?
Before you call people liars and idiots you ought to know what you’re talking about. Otherwise it just makes you look like an idiot.
She brought up Brit Hume and the fact that he got her the job. Then she agreed to discuss the rumor and even expanded on it. She was not a victim, as Scott above implies.
Wake up and smell the bong water, Mark. Hawk just schooled you. Megyn Kelly was NOT the one who brought up the rumors, the interviewer did. And I give credit to both Brit Hume and Megyn Kelly for having a better sense of humor about this tabloid trash wallow than I could ever muster.
Oh, there’s an interview in that GQ?
Meg just had a baby.
Atta’ girl Meg, milk your “Killer B’s” for all their worth while there firm & plump and all swelled up…..Got MILF?
Awww look..The Lib who posted this little hit piece, and all the Libs who posted in agreement, don’t like Megyn Kelly because she works at FOX NEWS which they hate. So they nit pick and complain about they way she walks and the way she talks.
They have felt threatened ever since there existed just one News Network that isn’t an A$$ Kissing mouth piece for the Dems. Well Libs, tie your panties in a knot, because FOX is the THE number one rated cable news station by far. And their audience is growing constantly. Get used to it.
I don’t dislike Kelly because she’s on Fox. I dislike her because she is a dishonest hack who gives journalism a bad name.
FYI: Glenn Beck’s average audience is down October to November (from 2,299,000 to 2,748,000).
Fox news is AT THE TOP in every ratings category this week, including the amazing Mr. Beck. Read ’em and weep, Mark.
href=”http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2011/01/07/cable-news-ratings-for-thursday-january-6-2011/77670″>
Numbers don’t lie. You can’t spin it, it’s math!
Considering that CNN lost more primetime viewers than any other cable network in 2010, and the final year end 2010 primetime averages for the cable news networks were as follows:
Fox News: 2.03 million viewers; 502,000 adults 25-54
MSNBC: 771,000 viewers; 252,000 adults 25-54
CNN: 592,000 viewers; 173,000 adults 25-54
So what? McDonald’s is the number one restaurant in America. That doesn’t mean they have the best food. It means they have a product that is loaded with filler and appeals to the lowest common denominator. Which is a pretty good description of Fox News.