Leigh Sales Is Retweeting The Abuse She’s Copped While Covering The 2016 Federal Election
"Don't want to sound rude, but maybe she's sleeping with an insider?"
Leigh Sales is often regarded as one of the best Australian journalists on television, who has a knack for skewering even the most self-assured politicians and calling them on their inconsistencies. Of course as a political journalist who engages with the internet, Sales regularly receives a torrent of abuse from backwater trolls who seem to find every aspect of her being extremely offensive.
However as a female political journalist, this abuse is somewhat worse than male journalists in Sales’ position and it frequently takes the form of trivialising her as some chick who just wants to flirt with politicians.
@SquigglyRick it’s off the charts currently – due to high stakes of election I think. Deranged but hopefully not dangerous.
— Leigh Sales (@leighsales) June 30, 2016
Today Sales began retweeting a tiny fraction of the online abuse she has copped during her federal election coverage and as you can imagine, it’s pretty disgraceful. For many women this won’t be surprising — a Women in Media study in April found that 48 percent of female journalists have experienced “intimidation, abuse or sexual harassment” at work. This kind of abuse is now the norm.
Let me call out the river of disgusting, sexist and relentless abuse I’ve on Twitter during this campaign with a handful of examples: — Leigh Sales (@leighsales) June 30, 2016
@whitefangdragon @freeradicalone @abc730 There are some around Bill who WILL make @leighsales Pay, but she probably has something lined up
— Don Voegt (@Donvoegt) June 29, 2016
@Mcali4 I’d rather watch dog turd turn white than watch @abc730 and @leighsales – disgraceful “journalism”.
— nick harris (@nickydivision) June 30, 2016
. @leighsales My prediction for 7.33pm tonight… #abc730 #auspol #Ausvotes pic.twitter.com/jBKcnPGz0A
— Peter Deane (@Peter_Deane) June 30, 2016
@CanberraMemes @LennaLeprena Don’t want to sound rude but maybe she is sleeping with an insider?
— Noel (@_SocialDemocrat) June 30, 2016
Inspired by @leighsales calling out her trolls, here’s some abuse the Herald Sun’s political reporters are copping pic.twitter.com/TNvHzDBqTA
— Annika Smethurst (@annikasmethurst) June 30, 2016
It’s almost impossible to imagine male journalists being accused of wanting to sleep with the prime minister or trading sex for insider political knowledge. Urgh. Who else is counting down the hours until this election is over?