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Abstract
TV news is a visual medium that requires its on-air journalists to look good, but a history of lawsuits and survey research suggests that this burden is spread unevenly. Critics charge that women are expected to look younger and sexier, and minority broadcasters are held to a White standard of beauty. This project investigated the reality behind those complaints by examining the faces of on-air journalists working for local stations in the US according to race, gender, and attractiveness. The resulting content analysis of more than 400 online publicity photos suggests that a certain look dominates for men and for women and that the range of appearance standards is wider for men than women.
Notes
1. Stationindex.com is a continually updated private website that lists local television stations in the US according to network and location. .
2. Certain categories, such as the photo-subject’s ethnicity, are social constructions problematized by stereotypes in Western culture. Nevertheless, individuals make such basic judgments about one another every day, and these every day categorizations remain part of contemporary social life.
