Things I wish I had known: The Threats
Things I wish I had known part 3. The Threats! This is an article series about things the author wish she had been aware of when starting out her professional career within equestrian media.
Like I initially stated in the post about Censorship I was naive to think things like these were never gonna come my way either as a writing reporter or blogger in the world of horses and equestrianism.
Turns out I was wrong.
One memorable episode about a threat was doing some digging around Olympic funding of some riders. At the time not only me but a lot of other people had seen some weird things connected to one of the riders.
Things that didn’t add up.
Things worth digging into.
So I did.
Part of me wish I hadn’t.
The response that landed in my inbox from the then president of this specific National Olympic committee was frightening. Like Halloween the movie frightening!
Reading it I must have made me look like that painting by Edward Munch, you know the Scream. It literally sent chills down my spine making me scared shitless!
In all, the only thing missing from his response to what should have been a vert easy question to respond to, was basically a threat on my life.
A huge part of the current version of me wish I still had that e-mail.
Cause years later as in the year of 2024 that particular e-mail would have ruined his career in every sense of the word, for good!
Then we for sure would not have had to see him swagging around as the Chef de Mission for his home country during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
So again, you live, you learn, and I personally would not lift an eyebrow is and when any story of some kind of misconduct on his behalf comes out.
What a creep!
The pressrelease from hell..
Another time me and a friend wrote a pressrelease about his company and the new development of his and his family’s business. It was approved by his father, who was the CEO of their company, and was to be published exclusively on my then website.
So far so good.
At least until the moment it wasn’t..
Another journalist stalking my website picked the story up. Why wouldn’t she, it was really big news and these days more than anything that is how it works in media. If you don’t have the news, go find it!
However, this journalist did not only rewrite it and publish it on the biggest magazine in the country.
No, she also made her very own interpretation of it [not for the first time in her career] and falsified information which in all led her article to become something that we have come to refer to as fake news.
Not ones did she talk to the family it was all about, which would probably have saved her from the embarrassment to come.
Her interpretation did not only create a complete new narrative. The fact it had done so, also went viral on social media.
Realising this, this journalist turned her focus at me and threatened me. All this while giving me the blame she now was looking bad in the eyes of the public. Come again what?
Fast forwarding some ten years to the year of 2024, this journalist have already made some weird half threatening comments about a podcast I am producing.
Do we see a pattern here? Writing this story and publishing it give me a weird feeling she might come at it again.
But not as weird as the one when we published pressrelease from Eric Lamaze the other week. That one really triggered both stomach ache and nausea. Which in all is probably based on the above and previous experiences.
Stay tuned for the next episode in this short story series - The Trolls..
This was episode 3. in my little serie Things I wish I had known before entering the stage of equestrian journalism. I hope it can be an inspiration for others, cause it is not all about horses.
I am pretty sure these things happen in most sports, and also on other kind of media. If you experienced something similar, please feel free to share your story or any other comment about this in the comment section. Thanks for reading.
The Hoofbeat Chronicles is a personal blog. The views and ideas of this blog belongs to the author, and may or may not line up with your views and ideas.
