John Harbaugh, the American football coach, behaved in an inappropriate manner, giving sexist remarks to a female reporter when he was asked by her about the game.
John Harbaugh is the head coach of the Baltimore Ravens, a professional American football team based in Baltimore, one of the 32 competitive teams in the National Football League (NFL).
Melissa Stark, a female reporter from NBC was taking an interview with Harbaugh. The interview was on Sunday night when Baltimore Ravens were on a Super Wild Card Weekend match against Cincinnati Bengals, the American professional team based in Cincinnati.
The interview time was scheduled between the first and second quarters. Melissa Stark could not even complete her questions as the head coach seemed uninterested and he cut her questions right in the middle of it. He interrupted her with short and dry answers.
Cincinnati Bengals had a win of 24 points against the 17 scored by the Baltimore Ravens. The failure of the team had put the coach in an unsettled position but what he did was to dismiss the sideline woman reporter by being rude and vulgar to her and not allowing her to do the job that she was assigned to do.
As the interview was scheduled between the first and second quarters Melissa Stark posed the question of what the strategy of the coach was for the game.
She talked about the moves of the Baltimore Ravens from the first quarter’s game and referenced the penalty related to Marcus Peters, the cornerback of the football team.
The penalty had given the first goal to Cincinnati Bengals. She proceeded that with the interception the coach has said the watchers might see the come-in of Anthony Brown, the team quarterback. Stark asked him whether that would happen or not.
To this question, he replied in a condescending tone that they would just see how the game would go forward. Harbaugh is reportedly being backlashed by the netizens for the behavior that he showcased toward the lady reporter.
When analyzing the reports it could be understood that this was not the first time a female reporter had to suffer the misogynistic attitude of the male personalities that they had to interview.
A few among the many interviews that went viral and controversial for the comments by men that degraded women on a public platform are the American politician Rand Paul’s interview with Dana Bash, the American professional football quarterback Cam Newton’s interview with Jourdan Rodrigue, David Moyes’s, the Scottish association football manager, interview with Vicki Sparks and a numerous number of comments made by the former president of the United States of America, Donald Trump.
The called-out interview of Rand Paul and Dana Bash is from more than 7 years ago. In 2016, he was one of the two candidates declared by the Republican party for the year’s presidential nomination.
He reportedly characterized women as intelligent, post-facing questions about his behavior towards female journalists in interviews. Dana Bash, a CNN host, was talking with him and he ended up the talk with an answer to the question that asked him whether he would pull punches with female interviewers from then on.
He said that he thinks women have come a long way, he added that women were in many positions that were in not because they were women but because they were intelligent and they should be equal to their counterparts and they should be treated equally.
He continued that he never had come into any interview thinking that it would be a man versus woman interview. The only thing on his mind would be that the women interviewers would be having tough questions and he has got to be prepared.
He said that he would treat a woman just the way he would do a man and that he would never make a move to be less aggressive to anybody just because they were women.
In 2017, Cam Newton the quarterback of the Carolina Panthers, a professional American football team based in Charlotte, had ridiculed the female reporter who asked him questions. Jourdan Rodrigue who was a beat reporter along with Charlotte Observer asked him a direct question.
She asked him about the route running of Devin Funchess a wide receiver for the Carolina Panthers.
He did not answer to her question but he replied that it was funny to hear a female talk about routes. He repeated the statement and emphasized the word funny.
This interview incident was carried out on Twitter and Rodrigue had tweeted that it was not funny but rather it was her job. As his remarks were called out he expressed regret for his action.
In 2017 the football manager of Sunderland, an English association football club, David Moyes was despised by reporters for the way he treated Vicki Sparks, a reporter for BBC. The interview was after his team ended up in a 0-0 draw in a match.
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Sparks asked him whether he felt more pressure on him as Ellis Short, the owner of the club was closely watching him.
To this question, he replied that she was just getting a wee bit naughty there. He warned her to watch herself as she would still get a slap even though she was a woman. He asked her to be careful when she comes in the next time.
The mention of the slap reportedly gave him the status of having a stereotypical misogynistic attitude towards someone just because that person was a female. He later apologized to her.
The ex-president of the United States, Donald Trump has been criticized for the reported reckless behavior that he treated women journalists with. In a White House Press briefing when Weijia Jiang, a Chinese-American journalist, asked him to comment on the reaction towards Coronavirus he called her question as nasty.
He said that she should ask that question to the Chinese authorities. He also told her to keep her voice down and to take it nice and easy with the questions.
In the same press briefing, he did not even cooperate with another female reporter, Kaitlan Collins for CNN. He attempted to interrupt her question and move on to someone else and when it came that he had to answer her question he simply ended the session.
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