In a male dominated industry that attracts a male dominated audience, WFAN’s Maggie Gray offered great perspective on the Mets firing general manager Jared Porter for past inappropriate behavior.
In what appeared to be a straightforward decision by the Mets, the largely male audience and base of callers for WFAN was still littered with questions such as “why would a woman save those messages for five years?” Featuring one of the industries few full-time female hosts, WFAN was able to offer a strong point of view when answering those questions.
“62 text messages aren’t a mistake,” Gray began. “That’s a choice that you are making. He’s a grownup and he had a choice to send those text messages. This isn’t on her, this is on him.”
Gray explained that in the situation of Porter, the female didn’t hold the text messages. The victim’s story was told years ago, but she didn’t want it reported, fearing a negative impact on her sports journalism career as she attempted to cover the good ol’ boys club. Despite the fact that the female reporter was not holding Porter’s harassing messages, Gray still explained why a person in the victim’s situation might have kept the texts.
“A lot of times when women find themselves in these situations where someone in a position of power does something that’s inappropriate – the biggest battle you face is making sure people believe you,” Gray said. “’What did you do, what did you say, what were you wearing, how did you bring this on yourself?’ is a lot of times how these situations get interpreted and this is another thing that keeps people from coming forward.”
As a foreign reporter, the woman did not fully understand the culture enough to confirm what Porter was doing was not only inappropriate, but harassment.
Realistically, if this story came out in 2016, there’s a good chance Porter would have remained in baseball and continued on a similar track to landing a general manager position. Although the #MeToo movement was launched long before 2016, it didn’t really explode with support until 2017.
Use former Mets general manager Steve Phillips as an example. In 1998, Phillips was accused of sexual harassment. Phillips missed eight days of work because of the incident and settled the civil suit out of court. He continued as the team’s GM until June 2003, when he was fired for performance reasons. 11 years after the harassment suit, Phillips admitted another extramarital affair, this time with a 22-year-old ESPN production assistant. ESPN fired Phillips less than a week after the affair was publicized and he’s since spent nearly a decade as a SiriusXM radio host.
Porter might get another opportunity to work in baseball again, but it’s fair to assume his second chances will be limited.