When Sean Simoes, a rather pathetic engineer with a $106,000 salary and a group of idiot friends, decided to shout obscenities at TV reporter Shauna Hunt they offended a lot of people. Hunt, you see, had become a target by simply doing what reporters often do, talking to random people at a Toronto soccer game last weekend.
We won’t repeat his words here, not because we are frightened of any reprisal, but because they are so vulgar and banal that any string of vulgarities that may cross the mind could easily substitute. That’s our choice. Enough to say, they are offensive to women, to anyone who knows a woman, mothers in general and last, but not least, other reporters. The same could be said for the unnamed yokel who is facing a $401 fine in Calgary for the same stunt.
These events make us ponder when people became so unaware of others to think this type of behaviour is in some way acceptable, funny or even trendy, as Simoes loudly boasted like a schoolyard bully when Hunt stood up to him. He puffed out his chest and attempted to shout her down, but she won the respect of everyone who has seen the video. Big time. Simoes lost his job over his comments, and rightly so. He has also been publicly shamed online and his world will never be the same because, ironically, the electronic world that birthed these stupid antics, also appears only too happy to eat its own young.
Apparently, Simoes behaviour began as an Internet joke, in which twits impress their friends by interrupting and sabotaging TV news reports. Funny, eh? We don’t think so either, because poor behaviour is something many reporters, and female reporters in particular, are often forced to experience in order to do their jobs.
Even at the Gazette, our professional, well-educated and polite young reporters sometimes put up with sexist boors and bullies when they only want to do the jobs they trained for. Some have come back to the office to say men who should really know better have uncomfortably and shamefully ogled them.
We also realize that all of our media colleagues do not operate under the same standards of decency. But the bad ones are also few and far between and still many of us have been called vultures and worse, with the same casual disrespect that you might expect during a road rage incident.
In the newspaper business, we understand that emotions can run high as we deal with traumatic events. So when one of our reporters was obscenely threatened online after posting a request to speak to anyone who may have known either of the RCMP officers shot in January we sort of get it. We pulled the request out of respect for those emotions, but honestly, the threat was very wrong and our shaken reporter did not deserve to receive it or to be treated that way by anyone. There is something else going on here. Disrespect, vulgarity and cowardly behaviour seem to have become the order of the day, where online sniping and misinformed opinion are easy substitutes for proper debate. Add to that the cover of gutless anonymity and mob self-righteousness and it’s clear where people like Simoes come from. His rudeness has likely overflowed from computer screens in suburban basements and on to our city streets.
