Online abuse. Two Reuters female journalists share their stories
Stephanie Brumsey, former Reuters TV producer, New York:
”I often do Facebook Lives for Reuters. We encourage viewers to leave questions in the comments section so that they can be answered live on air. I often get very rude comments about my weight in the comments instead. Normally, we don’t engage with those users and just delete their comments and ban them from being able to leave comments again in the future.
As a social media producer, I received several complaints, mostly from women journalists here at Reuters, that they were being harassed with threats of rape and death on Facebook and Twitter when they posted stories that they worked on. This was especially prevalent during the 2016 election cycle. On Facebook, we encouraged our colleagues to create a professional page, which is different than a profile. You have more control over comments with a page and you have a separation built in as well, since users can only see people who have liked the page as opposed to your actual friends or family members. And you’re not exposing personal pictures or posts to these users either. On Twitter, we suggest that they report these people to Twitter and block them. Twitter is not really built to do anything besides that.”
Gabriela Donoso, editor in charge for the Reuters Spanish language desk in Santiago:
”On a reporting trip, I was denied entry to a Latin American country where there is a very tense relationship between government and the press, and sent back to my home country Chile. Although that was a stressful experience in itself, what was worse was the storm on Twitter that followed. Many people replied to the news of my being refused entry by sending support or used it to back their political positions, something that turned the issue into a trending topic. Almost immediately, chains of conflicting messages appeared with my doctored photo accusing me of being an opponent of the government.
My teenage daughters were following the online debate with anguish. They asked me why people who wanted to undermine me and why someone had modified my profile picture. Chilean colleagues also called me to express concern about the impact of these adulterated pictures, which included guns and the word ‘terrorist’ and ‘Pinochetista’ (meaning supporter of the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet).
What affected me most was not being able to give my daughters a rational explanation. All I could tell them that social networks are a tool that can be very harmful if they are used by people or institutions without scruples. My daughters, then 15 and 16 years old, are heavy users of social networks, but until then they had not felt the impact of a post against a member of the family. The incident was useful to reflect how much the social networks can impact your life if they are used for bullying.”
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