The Little Black Dress

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Once again, proof that women in broadcasting have to so much worse than the men. 

KTLA meteorologist Liberté Chan wore a black and white pattern dress during the 6AM newscast on Saturday morning. The dress did not really work in front of the green wall and Chan changed to a black dress with sparkles.

Viewers started emailing the station, saying that Chan looked like she came to work straight from a cocktail party. It was the over the top mean comments that many women in TV have deal with. 

Then male news Anchor Chris Burrous thought it would be funny to offer up Chan a sweater while she was doing a live weather and that's when the internet blew up. 

Let's start by watching the video if you haven't seen it by now:

Now reaction from the Twitterverse:

Burrows tried to laugh off his sweater gesture, but latter took to Twitter himself to say he was sorry. 

As for Chan, the poor woman that was embarrassed and publicly shamed, she posted this to her website:

After receiving a number of requests for interviews regarding my LBD/Sweater moment on the KTLA Morning News this weekend, I thought I would share a few personal thoughts.

For those who missed what happened Saturday, March 14th, I was wearing a black, beaded sparkly dress and apparently, the station received a slew of negative emails from viewers saying the dress was inappropriate for air.

I’ve worked on-air for 10 years and by now, I’ve learned that everyone has an opinion and you have to have a thick skin to work in this business. It’s a visual medium and sometimes your outfit works and sometimes it doesn’t.

During the 8am hour, my co-anchor came over and handed me a sweater and said, “we’re getting a lot of emails.” I was surprised since I hadn’t seen any of the emails and didn’t think there was anything that inappropriate (the beads/sequins were probably a little much for the morning, but what girl doesn’t like something that sparkles?!), so I played along and put on the sweater.

That prompted a barrage of tweets and more emails from viewers, some of which I included below.To be perfectly honest, the black beaded dress was a backup. The pattern on my original black and white dress didn’t work on the weather wall (for some reason, it turned semi-transparent), so after my first weather hit at 6am, I changed.

For the record, I was not ordered by KTLA to put on the sweater. I was simply playing along with my co-anchor’s request, and if you’ve ever watched the morning show, you know we poke fun at each other all the time.

And, also for the record, there is no controversy at KTLA. My bosses did not order me to put on the cardigan, it was a spontaneous moment.. I truly love my job, I like my bosses and enjoy working with my coworkers. Since talking to my team, I want our viewers to know it was never our intention to offend anyone. We are friends on and off the air and if you watch our newscast, you know that.

More importantly, I hope my viewers were able to plan their Saturday once they heard my forecast and enjoyed the sunny weather after the clouds cleared. 

Props to Chan for keeping her chin up and handling the situation with grace and class. The best point she made was it would have been nice if someone wanted to offer up a critique on her forecast, instead of the dress.

You know, the job she was hired to do.