In their video "#MoreThanMean," men read actual tweets sent to two women sports reporters — ESPN's Sarah Spain and Julie DeCaro, a Chicago sports talk radio host.
The video — only four minutes and 15 seconds long — packs a lot of emotion into that time, Burke said.
“We can’t take for granted how much power words can have because we are not the recipient of it,” he said.
WATCH THE VIDEO: #MoreThanMean — Women in Sports ‘Face’ Harassment
Viewers can see the facial expressions of the women reacting to the tweets — like “I hope your boyfriend beats you” and ““One of the players should beat you to death with their hockey stick” — as they are read and the discomfort of the men having to say the words aloud.
A review of the video by the New York Times summed it up saying: “These men were not the ones who had sent the tweets; they were just friends of the producers asked to read selected ones sent to the women, sight unseen, and it was kind of like Jimmy Kimmel’s mean tweets comedy bit. Except the comedy part.”
Social media allows someone to anonymously attack another person, but the level of viciousness at women is much greater than toward men, Burke said.
“Fans get passionate, but we see men getting tweets like, ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about’ while women get, ‘I hope you get raped,’ ” Burke said.
“We wanted to read real tweets to women and see their reaction,” he said, adding the reactions of the men reading the tweets are also interesting to watch.
At one point in the video, one of the men looks to someone off-screen and asks if he really has to read the tweet. At the end of the video, one of the readers said he felt he should apologize to his mother just for having read some of the tweets.
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Burke called it a “case study video” of a problem they discovered while doing their “Just Not Sports” podcast looking at media coverage.
“We saw a lot of media. There are a number of women in the sports world and out of it coming forward,” he said. “There are a number of men in sports who had their eyes opened about how bad the problem was. Different people came to grips with a problem some had been facing for years.”
Burke and Hughes — who works for CBS Sports in New York — along with their podcast partners Adam Woullard and Joe Reed, will be honored at the 76th annual Peabody Awards ceremony on May 20 in New York City.
“We’re honored with the award, thrilled to be a part of it,” Burke said. “The Peabody is essentially equivalent of a Pulitzer Prize but for all broadcast media.”
The video has helped make people aware of harassment, but it remains prevalent throughout society, not just in sports, Burke said.
“Harassment is going on. There is a lot more work to do. The video was released last spring. As the year wore on, it got worse,” he said.
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