By Cinnamon Cornell
Cindy Bae was standing outside a bar on New Year’s Eve in 2020, camera in hand, preparing to deliver a live report on television. A man turned to her and sneered four words that made her freeze.
“Go back to China,” the man said.
Bae was a reporter alone in the field, a multimedia journalist on a night shift in Greenville, North Carolina. And for the first time, she felt afraid on the job.
In 2022, there has been a push for newsrooms to address the rising safety threats against multimedia journalists. Tragic loss in the news community and scary incidents like a journalist being hit by a car while reporting on a live broadcast all raise similar questions- are there sufficient safety measures in place for journalists? Do journalists feel comfortable enough to share their concerns with management?
Safety Against Racial Attacks
Bae was working diligently to get interviews for her pandemic related story when she noticed a large crowd gathering.
“My story was that it’s New Year’s Eve but this downtown club was violating curfews,” she said. “Basically, it was past 11:00pm and so they weren’t shutting down.”
The 30-year-ol saw a white man standing close by. She decided to ask him if he knew what was going on.
“I approached him to ask if he knew where this crowd was coming from, so it was unrelated to him,” she said. “I was asking about another crowd and he said no and got very aggressive with me.”
The man began yelling at Bae and targeting “the media.” He accused her and other journalists of trying to pick up stories and create unnecessary hysteria. That’s when the man started racially attacking her.
“So, I ignored him and as he was leaving he yelled to me… Go back to China,” she said. “He kept repeating that, kept harassing me, yelling the same thing and also calling me the b word.”
“That’s the first racist remark I’ve ever heard so blatantly,” Bae said.
The man eventually left but this experience left an impression on Bae that sticks with her till this day. She said while the racially charged attack frightened her, it was the lack of a response from her management team that truly disappointed her.
“Nothing changed policy wise, I wasn’t given extra security measures after I alerted my boss,” she said. “I do think that it had a negative effect on me, where I became more depressed about being alone there and just hesitant about my managers.”
Safety Against Weather Events
It’s the kind of moment to which other multimedia journalists, like 26-year-old Rania Kaur, are accustomed—the moment their safety is put in jeopardy.
“My safety was definitely put into question multiple times in my first market,” Kaur said.
The young reporter has been working as an MMJ, a multimedia journalist since 2019. The MMJ role has become more popular over the years at local and national news outlets. In the past, teams of two or more journalists would be sent out in the field to interview people for a story. In broadcast news, this typically included a reporter and a photographer. Now a MMJ is sent out to cover stories alone. Including stories people might deem as unsafe. One person now fills the job of multiple people at all hours of the day. In some cases, this means the safety of the journalist is put at risk.
Two years ago in Lake Charles, Louisiana, Kaur had a brush with danger. The day started off like any normal work day. It was Black Friday and she had set up a story and pre scheduled interviews. But all of that went out the window when heavy rain and flooding swept through her coverage area.
“Immediately the news director, who was miles and miles away, called me and told me I had to go find flooding,” she said. “I remember being terrified because I just heard the meteorologist for two hours straight talking about how the circumstances were really dangerous.”
While the meteorologist told community members to stay indoors and not travel on the flooded roadways, Kaur was instructed to drive into the flooded waters to retrieve footage and interviews.
“I remember going to a trailer park for an interview because that was the nearest I could really find where I could knock on some of the homes,” she said.
As the flooded waters grew stronger and the rain continued to come down Kaur was told she would be giving a live report on television for the six o’clock news. At this point she was alone on a flooded dark road with water surrounding her.
“A dude came on a bike with a really bright light and guided me out from where I was parked so I wouldn’t be trapped on this flooded road,” she said. “I still don’t know who that man is, I never got to see his face, but I was terrified for my life.”
Safety Against Harassment in the Newsroom
The safety concerns aren’t reserved for journalists in the field. 25-year-old Kelsey Perkins was working as a news producer at a local television station in Lake Charles, Louisiana the first time she experienced verbal harassment in the workplace.
“It was my first job right out of college; so, granted I am going to make a lot of mistakes and I am learning the real-world ropes and understanding how to be an adult,” she said. “However, it wasn’t a learning friendly environment.”
As Perkins navigated her new role she began experiencing rude comments from a senior anchor on staff who she directly worked with.
“If I were to write something that didn’t make sense or wasn’t what the anchor was supposed to read or how they read it, I would get more of a condemnation,” she said. “[He would make] a more belittling remark. Why would you put that? That doesn’t make sense. Who writes like this?”
Perkins said at the time she didn’t recognize the rude and sarcastic comments as verbal harassment but now she thinks differently.
“I would agree that I was verbally harassed because it was an ongoing issue of the remarks that were made,” she said. “If it’s not being addressed and it’s a reoccurring thing you just kind of clam up and you […] look at the industry different.”
Creating Their Own Safety Measures
In all three of these cases, comments and voices of concern went unaddressed at the management level. Some multimedia journalists choose to deal with the safety implications by coming up with small ways to protect themselves. Others choose to leave the industry altogether.
“I vowed that I don’t want to go to a newsroom where safety for any reason is compromised,” Kaur said.
And she did just that. Kaur now works at a news station in Spokane, Washington where she said her safety comes first.
“I will give this newsroom one big piece of credit; safety is their number one priority,” she said. “So even though I’m the solo night side reporter, I am checked on especially when it comes to breaking news.”