A sports reporter is being called out by fellow journalists over an inappropriate moment during the Atlanta Braves broadcast Monday night when he asked for female fans’ phone numbers on air.
Wiley Ballard, a sideline reporter with FanDuel Sports Network, was interviewing two fans at the rooftop of the Rogers Centre in Toronto during the Braves-Blue Jays game. He asked if they would consider rooting for Atlanta before throwing it back to the broadcast team.
Braves play-by-play announcer Brandon Gaudin, in the booth, then suggested getting both of the women’s phone numbers.
“OK Wiley, you got five innings, four innings to get the numbers,” Gaudin said. “Get us some more Braves fans.”
Ballard then pulled out his phone and told the women he was being asked to get their numbers. It was suggested between Ballard, Gaudin and analyst C.J. Nitkowski that this was a new way to pick up women.
“This might be the new move,” Nitkowski said.
Many other journalists were appalled by the segment and called out the unprofessional moment on social media.
Ralph Vacchiano, an NFL writer for Fox Sports, described it as a standard for harassment and placed blame on all the people involved in the broadcast.
“An unprofessional disgrace, from the reporter, to the guys in the booth, to the producer in the truck who could’ve stopped it at any point,” Vacchiano wrote in a post on X.
Ben Baby, an ESPN reporter who covers the Cincinnati Bengals, called it a “terrible look all the way around.”
“Feels like there were several moments in which someone could have said this wasn’t a good idea,” Baby said in a post.
White House Correspondent Seung Min Kim simply wrote in a post on X: “this is gross.”
Women in the industry also called the moment a double standard.
“Imagine if a female reporter did anything like this,” Chelsea Janes, who covers baseball for The Washington Post, wrote on X. “Career over. Pretty brutal to see it glorified by the broadcast.”
Dani Sureck, a reporter covering the Arizona Cardinals, asked if people were still going to ask “women in sports if they’re only doing their job to date athletes??”
“We can all agree how inappropriate and nasty this is, not to mention the double standard, right?” Sureck wrote.
Ballard did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Representatives for the Gaudin and the Braves also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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