The other day I was at 'Starbucks" getting coffee when I got to talking to another woman. College came up and I told her that I was in my last year and that I will have my B.S. in Communications. She asked what kind of job I wanted after graduation and I told her I wanted to get a journalism job at a magazine or newspaper. I really wanted to be an investigative journalist.
She told me that I was brave to go into a job that is being hated on so much by society. I thought to myself that not all journalist are the same some of us have ethics and don't put our views into everything we write. People have turned on the journalist for what they report, and it doesn't even have to be the journalist opinion, and they will still be hated.
But getting hate messages and being called names is part of the job, people are not going to like everything you write, and society these days get offended very easily, being a journalist means writing the facts and truths and not worrying about how people feel and not wanting to hurt their feelings.
We have to defend our work most of the time, whether if it is for something that is related to politics, sexuality, or race, those are some of the most opinionated when it comes to reporting.
People love to hate on the media no matter what you write, and that's fine everyone has their own opinions, but when you start sending death threats or wishing harm to them, that's when you have gone way too far.
Five staff writers at the " Capital Gazzet" in Annapolis last year was harassed by someone who had a grudge against the newspaper, he had been harassing the paper's employees since 2011. We as a journalist can take the rude comments but when something like this happens or a journalist is killed while reporting a story that's what is the scary part.
More women journalist are threatened and harassed more than men, they are harassed because of their gender, the way they look and dress when they are on camera and will be called all sorts of names, one journalist was called a sausage because she was pregnant and wore a form-fitting dress.
A study that was done by "Trollbusters" and "The International Women's Media Foundation" found that more than 40% of female journalist stop writing stories that they knew would incite verbal and even physical attacks, and even 30% thought about leaving their journalistic job.
We should not have to live looking over our shoulder because people don't like what we write, and we should have to leave the job we love because we are being threatened. The hate on the media needs to stop, having opinions is one thing, keep it at that, sending threats and harassing people because of the way they look, their gender or what they write is going too far, just because you got offended.
