Cleveland.com wrote:Bare facts don't tell whole story
01/29/04
When you hear the sound-bite version of newscaster Catherine Bosley's barroom stunt, it's easy to judge her.
A television anchor for Youngstown's WKBN, Bosley went on vacation in Key West, Fla., entered a wet T-shirt contest and ended up naked as a newborn. The 36-year-old blonde jiggled her way across the stage and into unemployment after one of the many men with cameras that night posted photos of her on the Internet. A videotape of her performance soon followed.
The day after Christmas, a tearful Bosley was out of a job.
"Catherine is a seasoned veteran who consciously chose to engage in behavior that she knew was inconsistent with the responsibilities of her chosen profession," news director Gary Coursen wrote on the station's Web site after Bosley resigned. "Returning Catherine to the air would cast the department in a seedy, tabloid light."
Coursen was also testy about the "overwhelming negative feedback" from viewers protesting his decision to let Bosley go.
"WKBN has done nothing," he wrote, "we did not dance nude, nor did we fire Catherine, yet we have somehow come out the bad guys."
In a business where the anchor teams often resemble second marriages graying older man, perky lass barely out of braces you have to marvel at the chutzpah of a television news director claiming he thought he'd hired Sister Mary Catherine. And Bosley's antics hardly rival the industry standard for local television promos during sweeps week, when the mantra is sex-sex-sex. LOL, I like that part about "second marriages" 
There is more to this tale. Here's what most people don't know about Catherine Bosley.
In 1999, surgeons cut open her chest to repair a heart defect. The scar is barely visible in most of those Internet photos, but there isn't a day of her life that Bosley doesn't look in the mirror and see the reminder.
In the fall of 2002, Bosley was diagnosed with a rare lung disease. Another scar runs under one of her armpits where a surgeon mined for a lung biopsy. One treatment after another failed. In constant pain, barely able to breathe, Bosley was slowly suffocating to death.
That December, doctors finally hit on a successful combination of high-dose steroids and expensive antibiotics.
She remembers well the day she got the news. "My doctor said, Oh, my God, look at this. It's clearing!' "
Bosley needed to hear the words.
"I asked him, You mean I'm going to live?' and he said, Yes, my dear.' "
"My husband and I were so excited," Bosley said. "We went from thinking I was going to die to thinking about a whole new life."
Last January, they took the Key West trip to celebrate their one-year wedding anniversary. One evening, they went to the bar holding the wet T-shirt contest. Bosley said she'd never seen one before.
"We looked at each other and said, Oh, why not? Let's celebrate.' We thought it'd be our moment with a bunch of strangers. And so I did it, scars and all."
Eleven months later, on Christmas Eve, an anonymous female left this message on Bosley's newsroom voice-mail: "You prissy little [expletive]," she snarled. "You're finished. You're done."
The photos were on the Web.
The station accepted Bosley's resignation a week later.
The ensuing publicity was as predictable as it was lurid. Local television stations and "Good Morning America" covered it, as did radio call-in shows and print media, many including a Web site address for the photos.
Some women have been predictably venomous, ridiculing her judgment along with her "lousy boob job." Why do we women do this to one another?
For the record, Bosley said her breasts were repaired after open-heart surgery. "I was pretty disfigured. I had reconstructive surgery. If I'd just been going for cosmetic effect, I would have gotten bigger breasts."
Bosley has apologized repeatedly, saying she let down her viewers, her family and God. "I want people to know I'm taking responsibility here," she said. "I'm not blaming anyone but me."
Radio call-in shows I can understand but what exactly did GMA have to cover?
