Sports journalists, like any public figure with a commanding presence on social media, are often subject to internet trolling from displeased fans seeking to air their grievances before an available audience who will listen. Anybody remotely familiar with Twitter has no doubt witnessed this in some capacity.
However, a new video campaign has been launched spotlighting specifically how quickly this trolling can lead to harassment, particularly when it involves women.
The campaign is called #MoreThanMean, launched by Just Not Sports podcast, and it features Chicago-area female sports journalists Sarah Spain and Julie DiCaro listening as male volunteers read actual tweets sent to them that are degrading at best, completely unacceptable in actuality, and mostly just downright dangerous.
The tweets start off laughably offensive yet nonthreatening, with men reading tweets about people wanting to start petitions to ban the journalists writing.
It quickly devolves into alarming threats, as one man reads to DiCaro, “One of the players should beat you to death with their hockey stick like the whore you are.”
Another reads to Spain, “Sarah Spain is a self-important, know-it-all cunt.”
Shockingly, to DiCaro, “I hope you get raped again,” referencing a piece the journalist wrote for the Huffington Post about her “astoundingly typical rape” following the news that Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston wouldn’t be charged with sexual assault.
The PSA video concludes with “We wouldn’t say it to their faces. So let’s not type it.”
