BOB GARFIELD: An empire can be built as we've seen by helping men fantasize about lying down with naked ladies. But now, from the supine to the ridiculous. Here's a TV news clip.

WOMAN: A South American artist claims he has sculpted the world's largest nativity scene. The work features 130 life-size statues and a flock of sheep.

BOB GARFIELD:Nothing particularly notable about that story except that the woman reading it was wearing no clothing. It was a story from Naked News, the on-demand cable program that has sprung from the 1999 web phenomenon, NakedNews.com. Both are newscasts done in the nude. Anchor Victoria Sinclair has just rejoined Naked News after a year long sabbatical, and she joins us by phone from Toronto. Victoria, welcome to our show.

VICTORIA SINCLAIR: Oh, thank you Bob!

BOB GARFIELD: We're probably the last news organization in the world to report on Naked New--News, so bear with me here. [LAUGHTER] But why a news show in the buff?

VICTORIA SINCLAIR: What we are, I think, Bob is a product of our time. You know right around the same time that we came on to the internet thinking we were the only people in the world, it was occurring in Italy and it was occurring in Russia. So it was obvious people had the same idea round about the same time.

BOB GARFIELD: So are you a journalist, a pinup girl? Both? What are you?

VICTORIA SINCLAIR:I'm not exactly either. I am an internet webcaster. I do read the news. In my particular position, we do have writers who prepare that for us.

BOB GARFIELD: A full frontally nude webcaster.

VICTORIA SINCLAIR: Indeed, that's true. [LAUGHS]

BOB GARFIELD:Now it's one thing to striptease while reporting, say, the index of leading economic indicators. But what about a suicide bombing? Isn't there a sort of cognitive dissonance there -- two very different sorts of oh, my God?

VICTORIA SINCLAIR: Well we do have challenges like that to face every single day, of course. We skate along the razor's edge of what is tasteful and what is not. We can't provide ourselves as the Naked News and not provide news. And some of that news is pretty harsh to deal with. What we try and avoid is putting up extremely graphic photographs for, you know, that visual dichotomy -- we don't need that. And we don't dwell on a lot of the gory details. We don't sensationalize it that way -- we simply state the facts -- this is what happened - suicide bomber -- so we all know it was bad - all we have to do is say this is what happened. We disrobe during our news broadcasts and we do try and time it, or we go to the stories in a way that it isn't too jarring.

BOB GARFIELD: You left the program for a while. Why?

VICTORIA SINCLAIR:I left the program not that long after September 11th. My section on the news at that time was, was, at the beginning of the show, so I had to deal with this every single day, and it, it just made me sadder and sadder, and I, I was finding no joy whatsoever in my job and decided that, okay, it's time for me to take a break.

BOB GARFIELD:But you're back so what's next for you, and I'd like to think that because of your job you've foreclosed on the possibility of working for a major network delivering the news, but you probably haven't. Is that your ambition?

VICTORIA SINCLAIR: Well it's certainly a possibility, still. Absolutely I'd like to make the leap, and not just personally; not just for me so I have a better career but mostly just to show people that that kind of a leap is possible; that because I do this naked does not mean that I, I can be pegged as a certain kind of a person. I think it's important to, to recognize that freedom of speech is something that needs to be experienced and acted upon and not just a pretty piece of paper in a museum in order for it to be real. They say in advertising people are really accustomed to being manipulated shamelessly with sexual images, and you just shrug your shoulders and say oh, well -- that's the advertising business. But let a woman be attractive and unclothed and open her mouth, and suddenly that raises a lot more eyebrows. But someone's got to do that first, and that just happens to be us. I think we're, we're trailblazers.

BOB GARFIELD: Okay! Trailblazers. I, I just really - I have one more question for you.

VICTORIA SINCLAIR: Certainly.

BOB GARFIELD: So-- what are you wearing?

VICTORIA SINCLAIR: Pardon me?

BOB GARFIELD: What are you wearing?

VICTORIA SINCLAIR: What am-- what am I wearing right now?!

BOB GARFIELD: Mm-hm.

VICTORIA SINCLAIR: [LAUGHS] I'm wearing platform boots, black pants and a stripey sweater from the Gap.

BOB GARFIELD: Oh. Well, Victoria, thank you very much.

VICTORIA SINCLAIR: [LAUGHS] My pleasure, Bob.

BOB GARFIELD:Victoria Sinclair is the lead anchor for Naked News. [MUSIC] That's it for this week's show. On the Media was produced by Janeen Price and Katya Rogers with Megan Ryan and Jamie York; engineered by Dylan Keefe and Rob Christiansen, and edited-- by Brooke. We had help from Natasha Korgoanker, and Andy Lanset. Our webmaster is Amy Pearl.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Mike Pesca is our producer at large, Arun Rath our senior producer and Dean Capello our executive producer. Bassist/composer Ben Allison wrote our theme. This is On the Media from NPR. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. [MUSIC TAG]