If you make your living as a farmer or rancher, your daily wardrobe selection probably doesn’t take much time.
Once you’ve read the thermometer, you select the number of layers required and off you go to do the chores or fix the tractor. You dress for the tasks at hand.
That was the intention of Canadian television journalist Celine Galipeau when she wore a head scarf during broadcasts from Quetta, Pakistan, a city on the Afghan border that the Globe and Mail describes as “pro-Taliban.”
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Galipeau, a veteran war correspondent for the CBC, said she was catering to local Moslem sensibilities by wearing the scarf. Many Canadian viewers weren’t impressed, the Globe reported. Viewers called the station on which Galipeau appeared, accusing it of caving in to Muslim fundamentalists.
Complaints got so intense that Galipeau took the unusual step of explaining her scarf on the air: “If I didn’t wear it, I couldn’t work. I think of it as part of my job,” she said on CBC.
Yes, wardrobe has politics, even here at Producer. While all journalists seek to project a professional image, sartorial elegance just doesn’t cut it when you’re slogging through a dusty ditch as a farmer describes erosion problems.
The snazziest shirt and tie fails to impress when an ag journalist has to disrobe, shower and don sterile coveralls to visit a hog barn. You’ve got to get the stories where you find them.
Dressing in suit and tie also has its drawbacks for journalists. Depending on a farm family’s recent experiences with lawyers or tax officials, a stranger showing up in a business suit might not get the warmest reception – unless he pulls up in a van emblazoned with a Lotto 6/49 logo, accompanied by a brass band.
Of course there are far more important reasons for ag journalists to think carefully about wardrobe. Foot-and-mouth disease and other infectious livestock diseases, for starters. Fortunately our readers and sources know WP reporters are well versed on the importance and necessity of biosecurity.
Like farmers, reporters don’t know what situations they will encounter in an ordinary working day – hog barn or political rally or a combination of the two.
Sometimes they just have to employ the Boy Scout motto and hope things don’t get too personal, as they apparently did once for humorist Robert Orben. “I should warn you that underneath these clothes I’m wearing boxer shorts and I know how to use them,” he said.
