Before and After
In a nakedly cynical effort to appeal to male TV audience members, most of the major league baseball teams employ “sideline babes” in their local broadcasts—young, lovely, shapely women who impart little nuggets of “behind the scenes” information about the local team during lulls in the action, of which baseball has many. It often seems like these women can’t tell a ball from a bat, but who cares? Hubba hubba!
The Boston Red Sox however, have had a string of bad luck with their lovelies. The last two became romantically involved with Red Sox players, in one case a potential scandal (the player was married), and in the most recent, as sideline babe Jenny Dell began dating Sox third baseman Will Middlebrooks, a conflict of interest in the view of NESN, the Red Sox network. Who would have guessed that having fold-out ready young women roaming dugouts filled with rich young male athletes would lead to this?
This season, the Sox sidelines have a different look. The game broadcast cutaways now lead to a large, handsome, undeniably male member of the broadcast squad, Gary Striewski. (That’s Gary on the right in the photo above, Jenny on the left.) Coincidence? I think not. I think NESN got tired of the off-field whoopee, and decided to go in a different direction that minimized the risk. Assuming this is true (and recognizing that it may not be), your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz is this:
Does choosing to have a male sideline reporter to avoid romantic conflicts with the players constitute unfair and unethical gender discrimination?
Ethics Alarms 
One wonders how long it will be before an openly gay player takes up with a sideline hunk. Not a matter of if, but when.
Let’s face it – with the exception of play-by-play announcers – and even them in most cases – sports TV generally likes to feature physically attractive people, regardless of gender.
TV personalities are generally under specific contract, to the logical solutions would seem to either 1) include language specifically related to romantic relationships with players, or 2) saying the hell with it and effectively saying “none of our damned business who sleeps with what.”
Personally, I think #2 is the more appropriate.
Reporters sleeping with subjects? Pure journalistic ethics breach.
Of course, it’s absurd to call Jenny a “reporter”—she was a cheerleader reading a teleprompter.
Given the last two incidents, no it is not “unethical gender discrimination.” They have rational reasons for the hire they have made.
Now, for the female sideline reporters who haven’t taken up with players, it may be unfair. But sometimes, unfair is not unethical.
It is no more unethical or discriminatory than hiring the female because of her sexual attractiveness in the first place.
“Comparative Virtue”?????
Or implication that the initial practice was unethical also, not rationalizing.
If I understand your point, I agree. Having a gender component to a hiring decision is not strictly unethical.
The job is “eye candy.” It’s not unethical to hire eye candy as eye candy. Is it unethical to have a job called “eye candy?” As in “cheerleaders”?
Beats me. Merely pointing out that I don’t think Chris was rationalizing.
I didn’t think so either, but it sounded like rationalizing. Of course, you can still engage in discriminatory hiring for an unethical job.
Though, I think the initial practice was because there were no females in the broadcast booth doing play-by-play, so to show how balanced they were, the “sideline babe” position was born.
But, let’s face it: There is an extremely high bar to clear to allege gender discrimination in the entertainment industry. People are hired and fired not only for knowledge, but for presentation. They are judged as a “total package” and physical appearance and sound of voice are legitimate criteria to judge a person by in that industry (or any recorded medium…like the harassment video for a bank.)
Exactly. Agreed.
Many companies have “workplace ethics” codes that disallow sexual relationships among employees — though it seems clear that action is only taken (occasionally) when such relationships involve boss/subordinate ones.
Re the Red Sox, however: (1) I think it’s refreshing to have a male on the field (and frankly, he’s cute, so I like watching him… why not have a “field commentator” that WOMEN like, rather than babes that male fans can drool over?) Look at the denizens of Fenway Park — there are nearly an equal number of women as men, so why cater to only half the audience? (2) Affairs between “sideline babes” and players becomes news in and of itself, and it could well be seemly on the part of Red Sox management to decide against setting the team of for yet another situation that is an inherent distraction from the game itself.
Yes, it is clearly unethical gender discrimination if the decision was made on the basis of avoiding romantic conflicts. Just as hiring only female teachers would be after a male teacher was found having a relationship with a student. Excluding an entire gender from consideration for a position because of the poor behavior of a small group of that gender is unfair.
That’s not to say it’s gender discrimination for them to only consider females, or males, for the job of sideline reporter. It becomes unethical when the justification for such a decision is based on the poor behavior of a few people being extrapolated to be consistent with the behavior of larger group as a whole.
Huh? Male and female teachers have illicit relationships with students. So far, only female sideline reporters have relationships with baseball players, who are all male.
The argument is that it’s unethical to excluding all females from a job because two females engaging in behavior which was against the employer’s rules for appropriate conduct.
If I ran a company and I had to fire two male employes because of a conflict of interest, it would be unethical for me exclude all men on the basis that men can engage in unethical conduct.
Your concern that both male and female teachers can have illicit relationships also applies to the sideline hunk, both male and female sideline reporters can engage in illicit relationships with the players as well.
You can say that, but in current day baseball, it does NOT apply to both.
I haven’t said where I fall on the question. Here is where: I think hiring men because the women were unprofessional is like arguing that women shouldn’t be in the armed services because they keep getting pregnant.If there’s a rule against fraternizing with the players, then hire more professional women who won’t do it. It is unfair to presume all women will be unprofessional because two were.
On the other hand, sending a Jenny Dell into a MLB dugout is like tossing a sirloin into a den of wolves.
They didnt exclude females because of the two that violated the professionalism of the role, but the risk of future behavior and considered the risk great enough to change hiring policy.
The teacher rebuttal doesn’t compare because the risk isn’t as high in their opinion. Apples and oranges.
The risk assessment in this case is the unethical part. To make a hiring decision about an actual person based solely on the risk of a behavior derived from that person’s inclusion in a gender group is unethical.
Teaching provides an apt comparison, is it ethical if we exclude male teachers from elementary education based on their higher rates of pedophilia? Is there some threshold for risk at which point the decision to exclude a gender goes from ethical to unethical?
STOP SAYING THIS!!!! “Teaching provides an apt comparison, is it ethical if we exclude male teachers from elementary education based on their higher rates of pedophilia?” In teaching, the far higher rates are women molesting boys—and you do know that misconception IS one big reason there aren’t more male teachers, right?
Most child sexual abuse is men molesting children, not women, and teaching is no exception. I think when a woman does it, it gets far more of the attention, especially if she is attractive, so it seems like there is a legion of hot, crazy women out there seducing high school boys, but it doesn’t appear to be the case.
The AP’s survey of five years of state disciplinary actions against teachers found 2,570 educators were punished for sexual misconduct.
In the cases where the victim’s gender was clear, the large proportion were female. Almost nine out of 10 of the offenders were male.
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/education/2007-10-21-abusegender_N.htm
I want the stats covering sexual relationships, not vague “abuse”…a male teacher who places a hand on a girl’s shoulder will be disciplined for abuse; a female teacher who does likewise to a male is not even reported. The double standard is well-recognized, and outrageous, and it persists into the sentencing, with no equivalent of the male said to the Debra LaFave cases. I monitor websites that report sexual predators in the schools—there are more female teachers, and more female predators. 2007??
Well there is this report about double standards in New Jersey, which examined 97 cases of sexual relationships between teacher and student, 72 of which were male teachers. http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2013/04/a_look_at_teacher-student_sex.html
Given the nature of testosterone, why would you think that women teachers would be more likely to be involved in having sexual relationships with their students? That is a very counter-intuitive position, and not borne out by any statistics that I’ve seen.
Testosterone works both ways. There are more female teachers, and mirroring the attitude of male journalists who cover the issue and male web commenters, the victims, who are also male, don’t blow whistles. I very much doubt that woman on male teacher sexual relations are reported with anything like the same frequency as the reverse, just as female abuse of male spouses is grossly under-reported.
Sure, that might be the case. But at least in the New Jersey one, most of the cases they looked at were termed “consensual” by the victim, though not under the law, so that didn’t seem to be a factor.
That’s interesting. Also reflects back on the post about Lewinsky’s “consensual” claim.
Can it play any part? A little bit, as in, “And the beauty part of hiring Gary is, we won’t have to worry about one of the players dating him, like with Jenny. But he’s also the best one for the job.”
As long as he is the best one for the job, but if both Gary and Nikki are equally qualified, it’s unethical to exclude Nikki simply because two previous employes who share her gender broke a rule.
All across the country hot guys and gals work together without engaging in sexual activity, because they act professionally. It’s unethical to believe, and base hiring decisions on, the belief that professionalism is correlated with gender.
By the way, who’s “Nikki”?
Certainly not Darling Nikki…
Nope. All fine by me.
Maybe if the women learned to not screw the players, this wouldn’t have been an issue…
Yes. I believe it does. But that’s not the problem. My blog readers are made up of 49% women and most of us are rather tired of the constant line of bimbo’s parading around as reporters, analysts, etc. There are exceptions, of course, but to pretend they’re there for any reason other than eye candy is dishonest. Personally, when one enters a locker room with mic in hand I simply turn the channel. And I’d do the same for a guy who’s there for the same reason. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to recognize someone who really belongs there.
If they had the problem with “eye candy” fraternizing with the players twice, I don’t see it being unethical to suspend the “eye candy” program to reset the culture of ethics. It would not unethically discriminatory to women to make the sideline commentator position open to men, if the goal is make the position more about general entertainment rather than solely appealing to the baser instincts of male viewers.
As the previous position twice attracted the kind of a talent that would behave unprofessionally, it makes sense to change the scope of the position, and signal this by opening it to a more individuals. As I assume most individuals stay in this job for only a few years (while they are still young and attractive), I would expect to see a mix of a male and female commentators from the sidelines over then next few years.
When you said “Before and after,” for a sec, I thought it was the result of some sort of surgical procedure.
As did I. I thought someone had done an amazing job, you would hardly think they were the same person!
Oh, brother.
Ditto.
I’m not convinced that it constitutes unfair and unethical gender discrimination.
I am however convinced that your choice of words in this blog entry is unfair and unethical gender discrimintation.
The babes are supposed to be eye-candy on the sidelines. Women who are only selected for their looks and attrativeness – a matter of which they are very aware since that is what they work towards like any other model. So apart from them being nothing but something to gawk at by the male viewers – they are also supposed to show the complete opposite in their behaviour?
Let me get this straight: These sideline reporters who’s main job it is to embody sex are also supposed to rise above what producers and audiences (and they themselves) are reducing them to, and – by all means – keep their mercenary legs together?
“I am however convinced that your choice of words in this blog entry is unfair and unethical gender discrimination.”
You either have to support that with specifics, or get an ethics demerit. I reviewed my terminology. Using pejorative terms that reflect reality isn’t discrimination.
Haha! I certainly think it’s presumptive to assume that all the players and the new male sideline babe, a scrumptious piece of eye candy in his own right, are all heterosexual! It would be an even bigger scandal if pretty boy Gary Striewski were caught canoodling in public with one of the players. And it would be HOT, too!
All kidding aside, they’re still hiring people based on their looks, which is extremely cynical, but that’ll never change; it’s a visual medium and the audience wants to see pretty faces, men with athletic builds and women with great T&A. Bring some retired broadcasters our of retirement to do this cushy job and all their problems will go away. And the kids’ll love it ’cause it’ll be like watching their grandparents on TV!