Christine Craft is a broadcast journalist who will be remembered not for what she said on the air but rather for what she said, and what was said about her, in a federal district courtroom. It was there that she challenged the different standards by which male and female on-air broadcast news anchors were being judged in the U.S. media industries.

Craft’s broadcast career began in 1974, when, at the age of 29, she took a job as a weather reporter with KSBW-TV in Salinas, California. During her tenure at Channel 8 in Salinas, as well as her next position at KPIX-TV, the CBS affiliate in San Francisco, Craft filled every on-air position in the newsroom, from weather to sports to news reporting.

In 1977 Craft was hired by CBS Television to do features on women athletes for a CBS Sports Spectacular segment titled “Women in Sports.” According to Craft, this was her first experience with being “made over,” and she hated it. Among the physical characteristics that were altered was her hair, bleached so that she appeared on camera as a platinum blonde. After a year at CBS, Craft returned to California, where she again worked in several news positions including coanchor for the ABC affiliate in Santa Barbara, KEYT-TV.

Her life inexorably changed when she received a phone call from the Metromedia, Inc., ABC affiliate in Kansas City, Missouri, KMBC-TV Channel 9. According to Craft, a consulting firm had made a tape of her without her permission or knowledge and marketed it around the country. Executives at KMBC saw the tape and called her to Kansas City for an interview and audition. Given her experience at CBS, Craft stated that she told the station management that she “showed signs of her age and experience” and was not willing to be made over. She interviewed and auditioned in the KMBC studios and was hired as coanchor with a two-year contract. Eight months later, in July 1981, Craft was informed that she had been demoted to reporter because focus group research had indicated that she was “too old, too unattractive, and wouldn’t defer to men.” Craft decided to challenge the action of management, and when asked for a comment on why she was no longer anchor, she told a Kansas City newspaper what had occurred.

Craft left the station in Kansas City and returned to television news in Santa Barbara, where for two years she prepared a breach-of-contract lawsuit against Metromedia. In August 1983, a ten-day trial was held at Federal District Court in Kansas City, at the conclusion of which the jury unanimously returned a verdict in favor of Craft, awarding her $500,000 in damages. U.S. District Court judge Joseph E. Stevens Jr., then threw out the verdict and called for a second trial in Joplin, Missouri. After a six-day trial in 1984 in Joplin, the jury again returned a verdict in favor of Craft. Metromedia appealed, and the 8th Circuit Court threw out the second verdict. When the U.S. Supreme Court would not hear the case, Craft’s years of litigation ended.

In 1986 Craft wrote Too Old, Too Ugly, Not Deferential to Men about her experiences. She practices law and continues to appear as a broadcast journalist on both radio and television, most recently in the San Francisco Bay area.