Florida’s Fourth Estate: News 6 anchors unpack more hate mail

Why are people so mean?

ORLANDO, Fla. – It’s our favorite time of the year: when we get to open up our inbox and get a big dose of love, self-confidence and a reminder about why we love what we do. This must be what it feels like after a visit from Santa Claus.

Wait? What? None of this is true?

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It’s still our favorite thing to do. Every once in a while, when we check our emails there are some that leave us scratching our heads. Others have left us wanting to scratch out our eyes, so please stop with the awful pictures of various body parts. WE DON’T LIKE THEM. Also, Santa sees our mailbag. He knows who you are and considers this to be very naughty.

This week on Florida’s Fourth Estate, anchors Ginger Gadsden and Matt Austin are joined by colleague and fellow hate mail recipient, Julie Broughton.

Many of us learned as children, if you don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say anything at all. There must have been an addendum which says you can say whatever you want to news anchors, because the downright mean emails jam our inboxes on a daily basis.

You would think and even expect most of those emails to be about stories we report that people don’t like. Not the case. Sometimes they just don’t like what we are wearing, how our hair looks or how much we appear to weigh. In some cases, they just don’t like our faces.

Ginger was the keyboard victim of such a comment. Some guy took to Facebook because he needed to let her know how much he hated watching her on the news. That’s pretty harsh. We could point out no one asked him for his highly sought-after opinion. But that’s not the point here.

Sometimes the criticism isn’t about looks but rather actions.

Take for example the gentle viewer who is irritated every time Matt touches his wedding ring.

The guy insists no other person does this and considers it so egregious he is thinking of filing a formal complaint with our company. True story. Matt, ever curious, actually wrote back and asked the guy why something like this would offend him. He is waiting to hear back and waiting for that formal complaint. Stay tuned.

Our dear friend Julie seems to attract some of the most interesting email. But this time it was someone who simply wanted to get to know her. This person was really persistent. You know, the kind of persistence that starts out really sweet, but by the end of a dozen or so unanswered emails his patience begins to wear thin because Julie is missing her shot.

Now one would think all the unanswered emails would be a small clue. Nope.

We read every single email that lands in our inbox. Some days it makes us laugh because they are just so silly. Other days, we just wonder what’s happening in someone’s life to elicit this kind of correspondence.

If you would like to hear more of what else lands in our inbox, click on the link to Florida’s Fourth Estate.

Also, be sure to leave a comment and tell us what you think.

You can listen to the Florida’s Fourth Estate podcast from wherever you listen to podcasts.


About the Author:

Ginger Gadsden joined the News 6 team in June 2014 as an anchor/reporter. She currently co-anchors the 4 p.m. 5:30 p.m. and the 7 p.m. newscasts.

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