Women presenters aren’t ‘flirting’ when they interview, they’re just doing their job

US TV presenter Hadley Gamble has been accused of using sex appeal to distract Vladimir Putin during an interview, writes Charlotte Cripps. But does it really matter what women journalists wear?

Hadley Gamble and Vladimir Putin got into a heated discussion at Russian Energy Week in Moscow (AP)

It’s not my style to wear nude Louboutins with a 12cm high heel to conduct interviews. I’m a bit more low key. But quite frankly, what does it matter what you wear? And, as long as the interview is interesting, the tone shouldn’t matter. It’s about getting your subject to open up and stop spouting PR blurb­ – or propaganda. So when I heard that a Kremlin-run TV channel claimed the US TV presenter Hadley Gamble “positioned herself as a sex object” to distract Vladimir Putin when she quizzed the Russian president about the European gas crisis, I was intrigued.

She was also accused of being part of a special ops mission to embarrass Putin.

The “leg footage” released by the Russian TV channel, shows the CNBC presenter crossing and re-crossing her legs – as many of us do – and outstretching one long leg towards Putin, even, God forbid, licking her lips. In sexist attacks on her, Russian media reported that she “caked her legs in only shimmer”, looked “ready for the catwalk”, “shed a couple of kilograms”, “squeezed herself into a black dress”, and was “puffing up her loose black hair”.

She’s not the first TV presenter to get a reputation for flirty interviews. Good Morning Britain’s Susanna Reid has been accused of flirting during interviews with David Beckham, Arctic Monkeys lead singer Alex Turner, former Downton Abbey star Dan Stevens and prime minister David Cameron.

After her 2015 Cameron interview, which Mail Online’s body language expert called “less a Paxman-style interrogation and more 50 Shades flirting”, Reid complained about the focus of it being on her dress and admitted that she finds it “frustrating” being labelled a flirt.

“Wearing a dress and chewing a pen is interpreted as something else,” she told Good Housekeeping. “It’s frustrating – I’m a professional interviewer whose job it is to get the absolute best out of people.”

Whether Gamble was using flirting as a tactic, being a tease, genuinely flirting, or just being herself – the simple truth is, we wouldn’t be making a big deal out of it if she was a man.

Personally, I was far more interested in her quizzing Putin about his denials that he is withholding gas supplies from Europe to hike prices up, than whether she was flirting. I just want my heating on this winter – not footage of her legs.

Yours,

Charlotte Cripps

Culture writer