The “Price You Pay” and the “Badge of Honor”: Journalists, Gender, and Harassment

Abstract

This article utilizes theoretical concepts of sensemaking and affective events theory to analyze and interpret what type of harassment events journalists experience from readers, viewers, and strangers, and their subsequent emotional responses. Findings indicated journalists experience three forms of harassment at work from those external to the newsroom, and that women not only receive more sexual harassment than men, but they experience more overall harassment, from viewers, readers, and strangers. When examining affective reactions, men say they experience emotions of anger when harassed. Women, however, noted emotions of anger when experiencing sexual harassment, and emotions of fear when experiencing incivility and disruptive harassment and personally attacking harassment.