A Good Fight

In the battle against sex discrimination, many have cause to fight but few choose to do so in the visible, gutsy manner of television newscaster Christine Craft. She was willing to sue when she thought that a Kansas City station treated her differently from the way it treated male employees, to have her personal appearance and public appeal debated in court, to sue again when the first decision was overturned, and finally to go to the U.S. Supreme Court when a second verdict in her favor was also overturned. That the Supreme Court declined to review her case does not diminish its significance.

Until Craft filed her suit, no sex-discrimination case against any major media outlet had ever been heard in court; at least half a dozen had been settled out of court. Women--and blacks, for that matter--had achieved most of their early gains at local stations because the pre-Reagan Federal Communications Commission said that broadcasters had to have affirmative-action plans.

With her ready sense of humor, Craft had warned Metromedia, the owner of the station involved, that she was 36, “had lines, bags, wrinkles as signs of my experience and hard work, (and) that I was a surfer and had probably seen too much sun.” Once hired and put on the air, Craft said, she found that the station wanted to redo her appearance despite pre-employment promises to the contrary. She protested. She was removed as co-anchor. She said she was told that she was “too old, too unattractive and not sufficiently deferential to men.” She sued.

Two juries agreed with Craft--one finding that she was the victim of sex discrimination, the other that she was the victim of fraud. Leaving sex discrimination aside, lawyers in Craft’s corner argue that the Supreme Court could have taken the case on Seventh Amendment grounds alone. That amendment guarantees trial by jury and says that juries’ findings of fact may not be overturned on appeal. Appeal courts are supposed to rule only on matters of law, these lawyers add, yet the federal appeals court reversed the Craft jury’s finding of fact that fraud had occurred.

Christine Craft has another anchor job now in Sacramento. But she’s out thousands of dollars in legal fees and thousands more dollars that two juries awarded her but that judges denied her. She has, however, set in motion what one lawyer described as “a silent revolution” among women who work at many television stations. Because their bosses don’t want their stations to become targets of similar suits and bad publicity and because some of these women are now more conscious of discrimination, they enjoy fairer treatment. The battle for equality isn’t over, but Craft put up a good fight.