Fox News Host: We Choose Our Female Anchors From ‘Victoria’s Secret Catalogue’

Posted Friday, November 16, 2012 by Abraham White

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  • Fox News Host: We Choose Our Female Anchors From ‘Victoria’s Secret Catalogue’

Fox News has a pretty well-established reputation for saying out-of-touch things, but today they might have reached a new low when "Fox & Friends" co-host Brian Kilmeade referred to his female colleagues at the network as Victoria’s Secret models who can talk.

During his Fox News radio program, Kilmeade said the network hires female anchors by flipping through "the Victoria’s Secret catalogue” and asking if “any of these people [can] talk.” His remarks came in response to a caller complimenting Kilmeade’s guest, "Fox & Friends Weekend" co-host Alisyn Camerota, and offering praise for the person who hired "all the women of Fox." You can hear the full conversation here.

As Media Matters notes, Fox News has a long history of sexism on-camera and behind the scenes and the president of Fox News, Roger Ailes, has admitted that part of his hiring process for female anchors involves determining if a woman is “attractive” enough to be on television.

What’s just as troubling as the blatant sexism that lives at Fox News is the fact that they are consistently the most-watched cable news channel. With so many people tuning in, the network and its anchors wield an enormous level of influence and studies have repeatedly shown that it has created and promoted ignorance and misinformation—no small issue considering that the network convinced as much as a third of its viewers to favor one political party over another in a single election.

Will Kimeade apologize for his comments and show more respect for women? Not likely given that it’s not the first time he’s made such remarks.

Abraham White is a communications associate at Campus Progress. Follow him on Twitter @abwhite7.

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