Right-wing Attacks Drive Online Harassment of Female Journalists

"I woke up the next day because I thought my phone was ringing, and it was just twitter notifications. While there were a lot of nice, kind messages, I also got rape threats. I got death threats. People were calling me. They were reaching out to my dad about it," said Allison Donahue, a capitol news reporter for the Michigan Advance.

After former Republican Michigan state senator Peter Lucido made sexist comments to her while she interviewed him for a story, Donahue published a first-person account of the encounter. In the days that followed, Donahue found herself at the center of a media frenzy that included online harassment that she called "terrifying".

Donahue's story is not an uncommon one. Female journalists face rampant online gender-based harassment. This harassment extends past legitimate criticism of their work and into sexist and racist attacks or even threats of sexual violence.

In a recent study from the University of Texas at Austin, researchers interviewed 75 female journalists from five different countries to "more fully understand how harassment influences how women journalists do their jobs." Nearly all the women they interviewed said they experienced some form of harassment online that focused on their "person, gender, or sexuality."

According to GVSU Women and Gender Studies professor Julia Mason, gender-based harassment is a "particular form of harassment that is based in ideas about masculinity and femininity. It’s also about enforcing particular kinds of power. "

"Sometimes, gender-based harassment takes a very overt form where people are commented on about their looks or other sorts of components. Sometimes, it takes the form of what we call microaggressions, which are sometimes more subtle or couched as sort of humorous," said Mason. "These interactions as a whole are about reinforcing ideas that women either don’t belong or they are less competent."

As reporters in an increasingly social media-dominated world, these women face pressure from their newsrooms to be active and engaged on social media. This pressure to engage with their audiences leaves them with no choice but to face the harassment.

When right-wing figures like Tucker Carlson and former Senator Lucido make sexist and demeaning comments about female reporters, their real-world harassment fuels a virtual firestorm that many women reporters cannot escape.

Take the story of Taylor Lorenz, a tech reporter for the New York Times who Tucker Carlson mocked during a long segment on his Fox News broadcast. On March 9, Carlson derided her for being “far younger” and “much less talented” than other New York Times reporters in a segment discussing “powerful people claiming to be powerless”. He went on to mock her for a tweet, posted on International Women’s Day, that asked people to stop harassing women online.

His comments, his show’s decision to replace Lorenz’ twitter avatar with a real photo of her face, and his incessant focus on her triggered an online harassment campaign against Lorenz. Carlson is the most-watched host in cable news, and his rhetoric sent his audience of millions after Lorenz.

She wrote, “the scope of attacks has been unimaginable. There’s no escape.”

According to Professor Mason, the pervasiveness of online harassment has a real-world effect as well. “It teaches the watchers and readers that those are either acceptable ways to behave or things that you should expect if you're female and negotiating this world; these are just things that you need to put up with," said Mason. "But there's this pervasive nature in which it can wear us down, and particularly for younger girls, it makes them think that this is how it works. We need to disrupt that and teach people that this isn’t okay.”

For young female reporters like Donahue, this climate of harassment is just another part of the job.

"I knew it was embarrassing, I knew it was belittling and I knew it was sexual harassment and a sexist comment. But I kind of thought it was just part of the gig," said Donahue. "I thought it was something I was supposed to swallow just because I'm a young woman, and even though I knew it was wrong, I thought maybe this happens all the time and it was just my first experience."

Mason says that gender-based harassment can have long-term negative effects on victims. "There has been research that shows how the repeated tension can reduce people’s self-esteem and capacity for engaging with things, make people withdraw, and keep people from applying for jobs or trying out for things because that opportunity may come with these negative impacts," said Mason.

Donahue said the harassment she faced was “traumatizing.”

“I still get a really terrible feeling in my stomach whenever I see anything about sexual harassment. It triggers something in me that sometimes I get an emotional reaction when I see other women coming forward. Part of it is pride, but the other part of it brings me back to that fear that I was living in for two or three weeks,” said Donahue. “I didn’t feel comfortable going to the grocery store. I didn’t feel comfortable going out to lunch in downtown Lansing because I didn’t know who knew me or what they knew about me.”

As more female reporters come forward about their experiences with online gender-based harassment, there is hope among reporters and advocates alike that the culture can change.

“We do not need to put up with it. We need to end it,” said Mason.