First: The hardworking staff is at great pains to say that this is no Kirk Minihane-esque hit on Fox Sports personality Erin Andrews. We have no idea how good she is at her job since we’ve never seen her doing it.
Second: All we know is that you can’t be a journalist and simultaneously appear in consumer-product advertising.
Exhibit Erin: This Wall Street Journal full-page ad.
Notice this?
Not to get technical about it, but the ad itself removes Ms. Andrews from the ranks of journalists. As does this tweet:
And then there are all those TV spots for some outfit called TruBiotics.
Representative sample:
To recap: Erin Andrews is indeed a Television Personality. She is decidedly not a Journalist.
Next case.
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So does this apply to Dan Rea, Gary LaPierre, Howie Carr and anyone else who records commercials for their sponsors?
Absolutely.
Sorry to be a jaded guy here, but most so-called “journalists” these days are not journalists at all, and not because they are flogging products as you show above–but because they think it is news to glibly take notes at a press conference and then report what was said, without checking basic facts, digging deeper, etc. The days of really investigating/understanding/digging into what you write about seem to be pretty much gone; way-too many journalists are merely transcribers of press releases or the equivalent.
Many times I have seen people who understand the undisputable technical facts of the story remark that the news report was wrong on those facts. That’s why so many people are either cynical about or fed up with those who call themselves journalists.
And let’s consider a recent example, about those protesters who tied up I-93: did any local journalist ask the real questions: how, when, and where did they fill those 1000-pound barrels? How did they transport them? How did they offload them? Nope–that kind of real journalism is too much work; it’s easier just to show the footage from the scene and then drop it. (Actually, the Herald did some real work: they posted the names, ages, towns of everyone arrested–kudos to them)
Gotta go now, and clean up some of the jadedness I left on the floor (or was it jade?)
PS Some well know network reporters do commercials as well, mostly on the radio—Charles Osgood is one that comes to mind, there are many more. They don’t endorse the product directly, but they read the script about it–not much difference, IMO.
More huckster?
http://thinkprogress.org/media/2015/01/23/3614673/abc-news-paying-jonathan-karl-koch-brothers/
Not exactly the same as Andrews, but definitely a conflict.
Erin Andrews is not a journalist. She’s the “pretty face” of a sports entertainment operation.
What I find unseemly is categorizing any of these types as journalists in the first place.
More hucksters! Your liberal media at work!
http://thinkprogress.org/media/2015/01/26/3615661/morning-joe-koch-brothers-awesome/
Wait – Scarborough a liberal? Huh?