Boob Tube

If local TV reporters decided to run with the following story, you can bet it would top the 11 o'clock news.

All the elements are there—plenty of skin, allegations of indecency, and claims that bigoted corporate bad guys shafted a longtime local celebrity.

But TV so far hasn't touched this story first reported July 30 on wweek.com. And The Oregonian only did a seven-paragraph follow on page 3 of its How We Live section three days later.

So it's left to WW to explore further allegations about KOIN 6 News—and the issues they raise about reporting, ethics and the line between news and entertainment.

First a recap: In a lawsuit (PDF) filed July 29 in Multnomah County Circuit Court, former KOIN news director Jeff Alan claims management fired him for raising objections about a staff shakeup by the station's new owners.

According to Alan, when Atlanta-based New Vision Television was negotiating to buy KOIN last year, it insisted longtime sports anchor Ed Whelan be fired as a condition of the deal. Whelan lost his job Aug. 20, 2007, a move the lawsuit ascribes to discrimination, though it doesn't say how. And Whelan couldn't be reached for comment.

After KOIN's sale was finalized Nov. 1, Alan says his new supervisor, Chris Sehring, forced him to hire reporter Kacey Montoya from a station in Palm Springs, Calif., at the insistence of corporate higher-ups—despite the fact that Alan found what the suit calls "sexual, pornographic or otherwise inappropriate" photos of Montoya being sold on the Web with "some quick Internet searches."

The suit claims Sehring fired Alan on Jan. 24 because of age discrimination (he was 54), and for objecting to Whelan's firing and Montoya's hiring. He's suing New Vision Television for $2.4 million, plus his old job back, at $150,000 a year.

Jason Elkin, New Vision's CEO, didn't return phone calls seeking comment.

The allegations came as no shock to veterans of TV news, who say mass firings are common whenever stations change hands. Older staffers are often cut because they make more money.

Higher-profile allegations of age discrimination in TV go back to Christine Craft, a Kansas City anchor demoted in 1981 because a focus group said she was "too old, too unattractive and wouldn't defer to men." Craft was twice awarded money by federal juries, only to have those awards overturned on appeals.

Whelan is the best-known local name mentioned in Alan's lawsuit. But it was Montoya's modeling work that caught the attention of bloggers at the political site chickaboomer.blogspot.com, and had DJs talking on Portland's Z100 FM.

Montoya tells WW she once worked as a swimsuit model, and some of her photos were sold to websites. She insists her work was not erotic, though one site calls her a "lustful and curious blonde" who "loves teasing her viewers."

"I'm not a porn star. I was never a porn star," Montoya says. "I never posed in any pictures with the intent that they would be put on an erotica site."

For Tim Gleason, head of the University of Oregon's journalism school, the flap over Montoya's modeling shows the blurry line between news and entertainment.

"Broadcast news is losing audience. And as broadcast news tries to attract audience, we see increasingly this tension between entertainment value and traditional news values," Gleason says.

For Montoya's bosses, he says, the difference may not be clear.

"Are you looking for someone who is a serious journalist, or are you looking for someone who is young and attractive, and presumably attracts viewers?" Gleason says. "Those are not mutually exclusive."

Similar cases have cropped up elsewhere, though with widely varied outcomes.

A TV reporter in Youngstown, Ohio, had to quit in 2003 after she bared her chest at a wet T-shirt contest in Key West, Fla., and video popped up online. A CNN reporter quit a year before that after her bosses learned she'd posed nude.

But Fox News reporter Courtney Friel soldiers on after unpublished skin shots taken for Maxim were leaked this year. Coincidentally, Friel once worked at CBS affiliate KPSP 2 in Palm Springs, Calif.—the same station where Montoya won a local Emmy covering former President Gerald Ford's funeral in 2006 before coming to KOIN.

Reed Coleman, a reporter and anchor at KOIN from 1995 to 2004, calls Montoya's move from Palm Springs to Portland "a huge jump." But she says Montoya's modeling shouldn't call her talent into question.

"If she won Emmys and had a long résumé, that's great. I don't think it negates or erases any of that. But it does shine a spotlight on the news department of a TV station that you don't necessarily want to shine. Or do you?" Coleman says.

Rick Metsger, a Democratic state senator and former KOIN sports anchor, doubts Montoya's past has hurt her chances with prospective bosses.

"In a rather cynical view that I have of television nowadays, they would probably like that. They would like to have people tuning in to see this person who posed," Metsger says. "It's all about ratings."

Montoya's recent reports on KOIN have included covering the Gearhart plane crash on Monday, workouts in local parks, and how to keep fruits and veggies fresh.

WWeek 2015