Ines Sainz: 'I'm Not Trying to Provoke Anything'

(Sept. 14) -- Ines Sainz doesn't understand what all the fuss is about.

Yes, she wears low-cut shirts, tight jeans and has photos on her employer's website showing her in a bikini. But that has nothing to do with being a professional sports reporter for Mexico's TV Azteca, she said today.

"It's my style," the 32-year-old television journalist told George Stephanopoulos on ABC's "Good Morning America." She's not trying to elicit leers, she said. "It is my style for all my life."

And she has no plans to change.

"I'm not trying to provoke anything," she told Meredith Vieira on NBC's "Today" show this morning. "I don't think I need to change. They are going to change."

The National Football League is investigating claims that Sainz was sexually harassed with catcalls and whistles over the weekend while conducting an interview in the New York Jets' locker room. The allegations have unleashed a media maelstrom over what constitutes sexual harassment and what role -- if any -- a woman's attire plays in it.

Fanhouse.com columnist Kevin Blackistone, for example, opined that sexual harassment protection "doesn't shrink with the fit of jeans or disappear with the height of a hemline. Women in journalism, or any line of work, shouldn't be subjected to ... sexual innuendo for any reason."

But while many, including Jets owner Woody Johnson, take the alleged incident with grave seriousness, it has ignited age-old derision and debate about whether women are responsible for the reactions of men to provocative clothing.

"The skintight jeans -- er, we mean, the sensible outfit that sparked the current controversy," reads a caption under a slide show titled "Baby got back: Meet Ines Sainz" on The Daily Caller website, a political blog founded by pundit Tucker Carlson and Neil Patel, a former adviser to Dick Cheney.

Sainz had tweeted the picture over the weekend as evidence she was wearing "appropriate" clothing.

Under a photo of Sainz in a bikini, the blog wrote, "Hello, Ines! My, what a serious photo you have to headline your website!"

That's not the point, USA Today sportswriter Christine Brennan told ABC News.

"She's a credentialed reporter -- the New York Jets and the NFL credentialed this reporter -- she should expect only the most professional, courteous behavior that you would find in the workplace. And that field and that locker room is a workplace," Brennan told ABC.

Jets owner Johnson said that NFL officials were conducting interviews of those present Saturday and that players would be contacted today. "We take this very, very seriously, as you can imagine, he told ESPNNew York.com. "We want all of our reporters, female or male, to be comfortable wherever they are, on the sideline, in the locker room or at a game."

Sainz said today she did not hear exactly what was being said in the locker room. "I pretended not to notice," she told "Good Morning America." "I was focused on my job." Another female reporter apologized to her for the comments and told her such behavior was unacceptable.

"I'm not the one who [made] the charge," Sainz said. When the NFL and Johnson called her Sunday to apologize and tell her that an investigation had been opened, Sainz said she didn't know what they were talking about.

"I wouldn't have reported it," she told the "Today" show, adding that other colleagues complained without her immediate knowledge. Asked if she now considered that she'd been sexually harassed, Sainz replied, "I prefer that the NFL judge. They have all my tapes."

Pressed on the issue of how she dresses, and whether the bikini photos and the plunging necklines invite unwanted attention, Sainz said she chooses clothing that she considers attractive. "All [women] like to be attractive," she said. "In Mexico, I'm very well known for my image and my work."