For Female Sportscasters (Vagina spreaders) on the Road (TV Set), Recognition and Danger

[google will censor this post as abusive]

Aww, boo fucking hoo.

Even before revelations that the Fox Sports reporter Erin
Andrews was secretly videotaped naked by a stalker in a hotel
room in 2008, female sportscasters understood how frightening
obsessed fans can be.

Andrea Kremer recalled being in a hotel room while she was at
NFL Films in 1988 when a man called late at night as she was
falling asleep.

“He started saying all these things he wanted to do to me, and
it scared the living hell out of me,” said Kremer, who is now
with NFL Network and HBO Sports. “I hung up, called downstairs
and said: ‘I got a really threatening call. Can you trace it?’
They said it was coming from inside the hotel. Then he called
back — it was so chilling and terrifying. I was shaking. My
heart was beating fast.”

After another call to the front desk, she said, the hotel
stationed a security guard outside her door.

“I told the men on my crew, and they were livid,” she said.
“They said: ‘Why didn’t you call us? We would have slept on the
floor.’ ”

Female sportscasters have unparalleled reach in an age of round-
the-clock sports broadcasting and the widespread dissemination
of their work across social media. There are more of them now
than ever, across multiple channels and websites.

But the flip side is unwanted attention from a male-dominated
audience that can include fans who get uncomfortably close, or
even stalkers.

Female newscasters and celebrities have long faced harassment
and threats — one newscaster in St. Louis said she had to quit
her job after repeated threats from a stalker. But some
sportscasters work in highly visible and potentially vulnerable
places like stadiums and arenas, where they are close to
passionate fans, many of them men.

They routinely take precautions like asking hotel clerks not to
say their name loudly when checking in, refusing to step into
elevators if they see glaring male eyes, and opting for private
transportation late at night, to avoid the flock of people who
often gather outside studios, innocently or not. Some check to
make sure the eyehole on their hotel door has not been tampered
with, as it was in Andrews’s case. Several female sportscasters
described their concerns in an article by Sports Illustrated
this week.

In one of the most disturbing episodes faced by a female
sportscaster, a man named Michael David Barrett used a hacksaw
to alter the peepholes of Andrews’s hotel rooms in Nashville and
Columbus, Ohio. Jurors on Monday found Barrett and the companies
that manage the Nashville Marriott responsible for invading
Andrews’s privacy and awarded her $55 million in damages.

Jessica Mendoza, an analyst on ESPN’s “Sunday Night Baseball,”
said that what happened to Andrews had made her wonder about
taking more than minor precautions, like closing the blinds in
hotel rooms.

“You think about all the times you’re in a room — and how scary
that someone could see me in there,” she said.

But even less egregious encounters can leave female
sportscasters unsettled and almost always on guard.


“I’ll try to avoid ever being in the hall of a hotel by myself,”
Kim Jones, a reporter for NFL Network, said. “And I’ll allow
whoever is behind me to pass me before I put my card or key in
the door. You have to be so aware because unfortunately that one
time out of 10,000, something can happen.”

Alyssa Roenigk, a reporter for ESPN’s magazine who also appears
on the air, primarily covering action sports like the X Games,
said she had rarely given her security much thought. For years,
she usually walked from venues to her hotel, even late at night.
But as she began to do more television and was recognized more
often, she was told by her bosses to start taking the courtesy
car provided by the network.

“At first I thought I was getting special treatment, and I don’t
want special treatment,” Roenigk said. “It’s not special
treatment. It’s being safe.”

Jamie Little of Fox Sports, who primarily covers Nascar and
other motorsports, said: “Just last week, I got on an elevator
and there were some race fans in there, and they were drinking
and it made me a little nervous. And they were kind of watching
what floor I was going to, so I pressed the wrong floor. So I go
to the wrong floor, get off the elevator, wait for them to go
and get back on.”

In another instance, she said, she was on an airport shuttle on
her way to pick up a rental car when a man approached her. She
was still not sure if he was an ardent fan or something else.

“This guy turns right into me and says, ‘Hey, Jamie, so you
going to so-and-so today?’ I was like, ‘Whoa, hey, well, I’m
here for Nascar,’ ” she recalled. “And he kept trying to make
small talk. I went down another escalator, and when I looked
over, he was literally standing there staring at me, on his
phone.

“That kind of stuff makes you worry,” she continued. “You want
to give people the benefit of the doubt. ‘Yeah, I’m on TV, it’s
not a big deal.’ But you have to watch the mannerisms, the body
language, the constant following you as they try to ask
questions. I tend to be overly nice to people. When weird things
happen, I honestly kind of forget about it because it’s your job
and I’ve got to get on a plane the next week.”

Laura Okmin, a sideline reporter for N.F.L. games on Fox, dealt
with a stalker in the mid-1990s when she was working at a TV
station in Chattanooga, Tenn. The man became angry when she did
not respond to letters he sent her and gifts he dropped off for
her. Eventually, police officers escorted her home several times
and security was provided at events that she covered. Later, a
man kept calling her at every hotel she checked into.

She uses these experiences at seminars she holds for aspiring
female sportscasters at her company, Galvanize.

“I tell them that sometimes someone will be lovely and pay you a
great compliment, but if you don’t respond the right way in
person or on social media, they turn angry and belligerent,” she
said. “Nowadays, it can be 24/7 with all the ways they can come
at you.”

After the jury’s decision, Andrews was thankful for the
encouragement she said she had received from other victims of
harassment, and she suggested the case’s outcome would improve
safety.

“I’ve been honored by all the support from victims around the
world,” she said on Twitter. “Their outreach has helped me be
able to stand up and hold accountable those whose job it is to
protect everyone’s safety, security and privacy.”

Comments:

Ted Connecticut 7 minutes ago
Wow. A lot of the commenters here would feel right at home as
members of the Taliban. Why is she doing a man's job? Why does
she dress so attractively? How are we supposed to control
ourselves? Loathsome.

Reply 2Recommend
bb berkeley 7 minutes ago
I immediately looked for hotel name so I would never stay there
when in Nashville. So Marriott can join Starwood as 'non-woman
friendly' in my experience. I had a harrowing experience in a
Westin in SF one night @4am when a guy was beating up a women in
the room next to mine (including throwing furniture against our
shared wall) I called front desk, security, nothing was done. I
complained all the way up the 'customer service line'. My
recompense? 8500 Starwood points! Hotel management just don't
get it, do they? They should have gotten security to move them
out or me to another room (although I prob would have just left
if I had someone there to physically protect me). That's OK,
though, just one more reason to switch to Airbnb!!

Reply Recommend
Mike S CT 8 minutes ago
I must not be reading the same comment section as everyone else?
I see many many more remarks seeking to jam this incident down
men's throats than I do denigrating Ms. Andrews.

I don't feel having one filmed nude warrants $55mill in damages,
don't care if victim is male, female both or neither.

Ms Andrews didn't deserve this treatment by the hotel and should
have some recourse. Having said that, if I had a dollar for
every time a female sports personality tried to flip on/off her
sex appeal with razor precision every time it suited her, I'd
have more than $55mil. If you pose for swimsuit spreads, better
expect a lot of attention, some of it negative.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/10/sports/erin-andrews-dangers-of-
being-female-sportscaster.html

--
google doesn't care about the facts in this case. A woman who
waves her vagina on TV for money was offended when someone
looked at it and she didn't get her 30 pieces of silver, but
google will ignore this, because they are busy sucking on
obama's cock.