Eye candy: where’s the real target, Janet?

The opinions of bloggers make news. Welcome to News 2.0.

Former TV reporter, now media trainer, Janet Wilson, caused a small fuss when her blog post Eye Candy was reported in Saturday’s New Zealand Herald by James Ihaka. Of course one could observe (a tad cynically) that the story made it onto page 2 only because it could legitimately get the phrase ‘tits and teeth’ into the headline.

While the Herald story is not entirely sympathetic, no doubt Janet Wilson will be pleased, working on the principle that being talked about is better than not being talked about.

I for one made some effort to track down Janet’s blog; which incidentally doesn’t appear in the results of the Google search I conducted using ‘Janet Wilson Adjust your set’. I found it thanks to  Ele Ludemann  at homepaddock who had thoughtfully linked from her blog because the ‘adjust your set’ search term takes you to this post.

Anyway, in a round-about way that brings me to the point: Janet gives a spray and takes exception to the young, female faces on television because – in her opinion – they are all ‘tits and teeth’ and know nothing  much about journalism.

The implication is that they’re hired by middle-aged men who merely want ‘eye candy’ to a) decorate the newsroom and b) attract viewers to the evening news broadcast who share their taste in nubile wenchy-things who are ‘loved’ by the camera.

I’m not sure who the target of this diatribe is, but there’s plenty who can take offence.

Lingerie football – TVNZ…Why do we need to know?

OK, it’s Saturday, it’s football season, but this is not right. Not only do we have the Cronulla Sharks to deal with, now we have the ladies’ league to distract and bewitch us.

Consider my utter and absolute dismay when Lingerie Football [NSFW] was presented as a “news” item at the end of the TVNZ bulletin.

I am very disappointed that TVNZ thinks it’s OK to humiliate female newsreaders for the sake of a tits’n’arse ratings point or two.

I’ve been home most of the day, I was doing some marking and preparing for my Writers & Reader’s Festival gig tomorrow afternoon. I had the TV on in the background because Moac was shopping for warm, smart and “grrrrrhhhhh…..merino!”

Throughout the day I was switching between Snoop’Dog THS, football, baseball, motor racing, Coro-omnibus, gardening shows, netball and news. At least a dozen times I heard the Sky-guys yakkin’ on about “lingerie football”.

A “no news” news item that’s most certainly a result of Flat Earth replicators. So it was and so it came to be that TVNZ replictated the advertising meme on cue.