VOICES
A SURVIVOR’S STORY IN THE NEWSROOM
Backdrop Associate Editor Abby Neff shares her story of sexual harassment in campus media at OU and explores the consequences brought forth by the lack of women in journalism. When I applied to Ohio University, I had to write a scholarship essay about my journalism experience. I focused on one article that I wrote with two other students about sexual assault and harassment at our high school. While I was reporting, I listened to teenage girls share their experiences with sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape. It was intense, but I never saw myself in any of their stories. I didn’t believe something like that could happen to me until last year when I was sexually harassed by an editor. I was working for a student publication at OU. I was a freshman. Newsrooms are often overcrowded with male journalists. According to a survey published in 2018 by the News Leaders Association, women make up about 41.7 percent of newsroom employees overall. The Women’s Media Center published a study in 2019 that examined the status of women in U.S. media. According to the WMC’s annual review, men still make up the majority of individuals in broadcast, print, internet and wire service outlets. Out of rank-and-file journalists, white women made up 30.4 percent of a newsroom. The issue is compounded when looking at race. According to WMC’s 2018 report on “The Status of Women of Color in U.S. Media,” also examining rank-and-file journalists, Black women only made up 2.78 %, Hispanic women were 2.71%, women of Asian descent were 2.63% and 0.04% were Hawaiian and Pacific Islander. Another survey by NLA in 2018 found that 0.25% of women in journalism overall were Native American, not including freelancers. After I read about the sexual harassment lawsuits filed against a journalism professor at OU, I decided it was time to come forward with my own experience of sexual harassment — not just as a student journalist, but as a woman in a society that silences survivors. The newsroom I was working in felt like a boy’s club. Most of my editors were male, and they were all friends. My relationship with one editor, in particular, started as a friendly and professional one. I was warned early in the
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STORY BY ABBY NEFF | ILLUSTRATIONS BY JULIA GREENWOOD semester that this editor had a history of making female staffers uncomfortable. The allegations included stories that he followed women home after parties and made possessive comments toward women who were in relationships with other people. Executive staff members told me I could come forward if he ever made me feel uncomfortable. I wanted to believe them. For a while I did, until it was clear I was on my own. One night, I was at a party and he was there. We sparked friendly conversation while other people passed by us. “What if they think we’re together?” he says to me as I sit against a wall beside him, watching the drunken people in the room cluster onto a couch. “What?” I reply. Silence followed. A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2018 found that 59% of women and 27% of men say they were sexually harassed at work or outside of work. Among the women who say they were sexually harassed, over half claim it happened to them both in and outside of work. What I found interesting from this study was that Americans tended to be more concerned about men getting away with sexual harassment and survivors not being believed than men being fired prematurely. The experience I had with editors in this student publication was the opposite of that sentiment. I was promoted to a higher editing position and began working closely with this editor, even though I told him I didn’t want the position in the first place. I learned later he had the final say in hiring me. He was still my superior, as I was only an assistant editor. As a team, we worked well together. We shared editing styles, gathered staff writers to address grammar and clarifications for interviews — you know, journalism. Our relationship changed pretty quickly. He started approaching me while I studied in the journalism building between classes. He would send me messages through Slack, a messaging app for professional organizations, teasing me both publicly and privately. He would try to
