US sports reporter Lyndsey Gough has shared "horrific" footage on Twitter showing her being "violated" by drunken football fans while attempting to report live from a game.
The WTOC 11 Georgia sports director said she started rolling her camera after a man touched her while she was setting up to record, but he turned out to be the first of many.
"Got all kinds of violated during my first live hit by fans," she captioned the footage. "This isn't even all of it. So uncomfortable. Can we please respect people's space?"
The clip shows Gough being pushed into, yelled at, and allegedly touched without her permission. She appears increasingly upset and uncomfortable as she tells one man "please don't touch me," before addressing another who invaded her personal space with "excuse you".
"Please don't touch my equipment," she pleads with another rowdy group later in the clip. "Please don't."
Eventually Gough tells her team back at the studio she "has to move", frantically asking how long she has before her live cross is due to start.
Unfortunately, the abuse didn't end in the field, with Gough receiving an influx of offensive responses to the clip that included assertions that she should "get back to the kitchen" and that she was "asking for it".
"Setting up in the middle of 'Their Space' and demanding everyone obey your arbitrary rules is ridiculous," one tweet read. "You cannot just camp in the middle of people and say 'follow my rules' even if your media [sic]. No one agreed to this."
"I don't think not touching strangers is a made up rule, I think that's basic manners," Gough responded.
"Go back to gramma's kitchen and make some muffins," another tweet read. "That's something you can handle (we hope). You're USELESS at working in the public."
Meanwhile, many Twitter users who found the footage "horrific" and "gross" came to Gough's defense, calling critics "disrespectful" and "tone deaf".
"These people in the comments saying 'hey it comes with the job' are mad disrespectful," one tweet read.
"The job is covering the game, being groped by weirdos in the middle of a broadcast is not in that description."
"The replies to this tweet are so tone deaf," said another. "Absolutely no excuse or reason to put your hands on or get this close to a working professional. The 'what do you expect' crowd can go shove it."
Fellow sports anchor and reporter Maria Martin said she'd also been harassed as recently as the day before.
"I had a fan grab my microphone and my hand yesterday to say something. This scene unfolding for Lyndsey is horrific. Help women. Help women in sports. This is gross," she tweeted.
