Mel McLaughlin Doesn’t Need Your Sympathy, Chris Gayle Does

Despite Chris Gayle’s ‘inappropriate’ comments to her, here’s why presenter Mel McLaughlin doesn’t need your sympathy

When Arnab Goswami sits down for an interview with a maverick interviewee like Arvind Kejriwal, he knows he must prepare for the worst. A walk-out? Abuse?

It’s all part of the package, isnt it?

You push, they shove. The modern day TV reporter isn’t just sitting in your idiot box delivering lines written for them by a producer who picked it up from a wire service. We reporters want to see the news unfold. We want to be out there in the middle. We want to witness history being made. We want to tell it our way.

For some time now, the difference between the news maker and the news breaker has been fast evaporating. So when Mel McLaughlin was told to go pitchside and interview Chris Gayle, she was just asked to do her job. A job, that within the span of a quick 2 minute interview, put her on every news outlet’s headlines the next morning.

Did she deserve it? Hell no! Should she have seen it coming? Yes.

Didn’t read what you wanted to? You can just as well close this window and move on to something else. You can just leave. An option a young Mel had as well when she decided to join the male-heavy community of sports journalists. With mostly male colleagues, covering sports mostly played by men and with an audience, that in most cases, is comprised mostly of the opposite gender- we all knew what we were signing up for.

It was going to be a great big climb up and we loved the challenge. I know I did. More than eight years have now passed with me running alongside men, trying to push my mic ahead of theirs, trying to get that first interview, trying to better my rival. Trying to be an equal.

But how am I an equal if at the first sign of trouble I am to be quickly designated the victim and pitied? Why is it so quickly forgotten that Mel McLaughlin actually managed to handle the situation on the field pretty well and just went about doing her job?

I dont really want to be the subject of such conversations. I like just going about my business and doing my job. He did issue an apology and I did accept that. We just move on.

Mel McLaughlin

I am an equal if I’m allowed to go back to work the next day, like nothing happened. I am an equal if I get to be in charge of my life. I am an equal if I am not reduced to a mere hashtag for what someone else said to me.

I am an equal if I get to decide what embarrasses me. Not the 9 o’clock news.

Why is it that Mel McLaughlin had to be dubbed the victim? The ‘poor girl’. In fact why is it that there had to be the victim here? Mel handled the situation as best as she could. Why didn’t the story end there?

If we are to be equals and ask for equal rights why suddenly designate a victim in this?

This might help understand my predicament better: In the NBA, right after a game, reporters are allowed access into players’ dressing room for interviews. Male or female, you are allowed to enter the players’ ‘personal space’ where some are changing and some have just walked out of the shower. At such a time, when a sportsman is in this ‘vulnerable’ position, we get equal access and enter the room with our male colleagues.

Back to Monday night. While doing her job, Mel was put in a vulnerable (and extremely avoidable) situation, but why for a minute didn’t anyone consider that she was a senior sports journalist and knew how to deal with the situation?

Why wasn’t she deemed capable enough?

Capable enough to deal with Chris Gayle – an overgrown 36-year-old man-child who can just as easily embarrass a male reporter, as he had Mel. Even more cuttingly, in fact (a short sample is in the video below).

But that’s not the argument here.

That Chris Gayle was wrong is a forgone conclusion. But does over a decade of Mel McLaughlin’s dedication to her profession now deserve to be reduced to her being remembered as ‘that poor girl’?

What is to be mourned is not so much the unfortunate interview or the interviewer, but instead the interviewee.

Save your sympathy for Chris Gayle.

After all, on Monday night, standing across from a poised and confident 36-year-old Mel McLaughlin was a man identical to her in age, but nowhere close to her in wisdom.

In a stadium filled with fans — most of whom, in all likelihood had bought the tickets to watch him in action, and in front of a live TV audience, Chris Gayle defied age, logic and obvious propriety to indulge in what he possibly considered idle banter.

And that’s where the problem lies.

His talent, skill and performances on the field: the double hundred at will, the quickest centuries, the mammoth partnerships, has led every cricket fan to worship at his temple. Playing for the team that gave us Brian Lara, Gayle was expected to be the next-in-line, the heir apparent. But his maverick nature, his temperament and his apparent disregard for the pedestal his fans have placed him on - has simply left us begging. Outside the temple, waiting for the next God in line.

So don’t. Don’t sympathise with Mel McLaughlin. She’s a successful, popular and loved sports journalist who’s found her way to the top despite men like Chris Gayle. Not because of them.