The Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal‘s Rich Heldenfels writes of an Akron Press Club appearance by CNN’s Carol Costello, who grew up in Ohio. Costello touched upon a number of subjects:
&bull On CNN’s coverage of the death of Anna Nicole Smith: “I can’t speak for all of CNN, I can only speak to the show I work on, The Situation Room. After we did a lot on Anna Nicole Smith, we felt dirty. We did. We had a meeting and a discussion about that, and we told ourselves…we were never going to do that again. And we haven’t. We do news.”
• On the image of women in TV News, Costello tells of watching a recent newscast (network not specified) where the man wore a suit and the woman “was wearing, I swear to you, a skirt so short she did not dare uncross her legs…Our culture seems to be saying sex is power.”
• Asked after her speech how CNN “treats women” — especially, as Heldenfels writes, “its seeming to hire young, attractive women for big jobs” — Costello said, “I’m not sure that’s true. Campbell Brown certainly isn’t young. She’s 40…CNN hired me at 40. I’m not saying CNN is perfect, because no place is. But I think CNN is better than most…We have a lot of older women on the air, and we have a lot of women who are not attractive in the traditional sense…Even Christiane Amanpour, she doesn’t even wear makeup. She doesn’t care.”