The recent spate of highly-publicized, mass mediated instances of sexual misconduct has brought attention to a culture in which men have been permitted to harass, humiliate, fondle, and even rape women – and men – with impunity. While the narrative surrounding this culture has been mostly bound to the entertainment, news media, and political industries, the recent firing of Gregg Zaun, television analyst for Major League Baseball’s Toronto Blue Jays, shows that the sports media are also implicated in a system that turns a blind eye toward sexual misconduct.

The media narrative, however, often misses the forest for the trees. As Sarah Banet-Weiser wrote in a recent post for Fortune, “The media focus has been on highly visible celebrity men—those men who occupy important positions of power […]. The news stories emphasize the individuals involved rather than the structural underpinning of all these industries.” Some of the findings contained in my dissertation research, which includes one to one interviews with 10 female sportscasters, begins to help us see how sexual misconduct (in particular, sexual harassment) both informs and is informed by the structural underpinnings of the sports media industry.

Early in her career, Paula (the pseudonym for a reporter/anchor for a regional sports cable network (an RSN) in a large Western U.S. market) experienced an episode in which a college football player she covered, a “big man on campus” type, propositioned her for a date and, upon getting rejected, gave curt responses during interviews and spread rumors that she had been sleeping with his teammates. This is illustrative of a hostile work environment, which all American employers are legally obligated to investigate.

Getting propositioned by athletes, Paula said, is still commonplace for her, despite being married and covering a professional football team. “I always get hit on by the rookies until other people are like, ‘She’s married. Just don’t try. We’ve tried. Don’t try.’ And it’s just kind of frustrating.” According to Paula, coaches behave this way, too, and often act professionally at first before later making an advance. Because of the innuendo in which many of her interactions are couched, she stated that she has never had a strictly platonic interaction with a male source.

Aside from the legalities of some of Paula’s experiences, there are industry implications as well. These sorts of interactions can make it challenging for female sports journalists to obtain information for stories that their male colleagues can get without the expectation of dates and/or sexual favors in return. As one unnamed reporter told Richard Deitsch of Sports Illustrated, “The implication is always clear, always just beneath the surface. […] As competitive and as driven as I am, there have actually been moments in my career where I had to be OK with taking an ‘L’ on a story because it wasn’t worth dealing with the nonsense.”

Sometimes, women are required to cover an athlete or coach who has previously behaved inappropriately toward them. Hannah, a reporter and anchor for an RSN in a small eastern market told me the story of an assistant coach of a team she covered who stalked her by continuing to send her messages on social media despite her requests that the messages cease. Hannah thought the messages started innocently enough, including comments like, “Hey, pretty girl.” But then the coach started asking her what she was doing on weekends and where she lived before demanding that she see him outside their professional relationship. When she blocked his Facebook and Twitter accounts, he used his organization’s Twitter account to continue his advances.

When Hannah reported the stalking to her director, they approached the team’s head coach, who saw to it that the stalking ended. Although the head coach was embarrassed, he admitted that Hannah was not the first reporter to be approached by his assistant. Making matters worse, in Hannah’s view, was the fact that her director obliged the head coach’s impassioned request to have her continue to cover their games. “My sports director, [despite] how uncomfortable I felt, and how much I asked him not to send me to these games, he sent me, literally, every other day for two weeks straight to cover this team.”

This is far from the only harassment Hannah has had to endure, but it is the most egregious case. Taken together, interactions like these can have an impact on the way women see themselves within the industry. “It almost makes me feel like they’re undermining my [credibility],” Hannah said. “Like, ‘Oh, because she’s a woman, I can speak to her this way.’ […] So, it kind of [makes] me feel like my [credibility has been] taken away a little bit, because they don’t see me as anything more than, just, ‘a face,’ so to speak.”

At a micro level, these stories are appalling. But it is also important not to miss the forest for the trees as it relates to the structural implications of episodes such as these within sports broadcasting and sports media. With women already viewed as “less than” within sports and sports media, forced to navigate double standards of appearance and sports knowledge, the sexual harassment that female sports reporters routinely face serves to ensure that society perceives women in the industry as working on the periphery.

Women caught in these situations, Paula’s in particular, face a catch-22: choose not to interact with a source who the reporter knows will expect a date or sexual favors in return – and watch a male colleague cash in on a story that could have advanced her career and improved the status of women in the industry overall – or give in, endure humiliation and shame during and after the act, potentially lose her job, and risk being branded as the poster child for the overstated stereotype that women are in the industry to meet men. This was one of the narratives after Jessica Moran, former Boston Red Sox field reporter for NESN in Boston, resigned her position amid rumors she had engaged in an amorous relationship with Red Sox manager John Farrell.

This double bind is emblematic of the argument I make above, that sexual harassment in the sports media industry both informs and is informed by the industry’s gendered structural underpinnings. If this is to change, the onus is on male athletes, coaches, and men in the sports media industry to not only stop harassing female sports reporters, but to work to change a culture that has, as evidenced by Hannah’s story, heretofore taken a laissez-faire approach to the issue.

Guy Harrison is an Instructor of Telecommunication Studies, within the Sports Broadcasting Track, at Youngstown State University. He is currently completing his doctorate at Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. His research examines gender, race, and politics in sports media.

Fireworks boomed from the Dean Dome two weeks ago, sparking a high-spirited time at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH). Tar Heel fans had gathered around the home court and all along Franklin Street to watch the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship game. The celebrations following the Tar Heels’ victory have been a stark contrast from last year’s disappointing buzzer-beating loss.

Still, in this heightened moment of success, a spotlight on past transgressions is fighting for center court as competitors—and editors—publicize UNC-CH’s former athletic and academic integrity scandal. News of the “paper courses” originally broke in 2011 when allegations surfaced that UNC-CH was hosting irregular courses for students, including student athletes, in an alleged attempt to keep grade point averages within eligibility requirements (click here to access more information and to locate investigation reports).

Hardy competition evidently brings about the low blows and big accusations that re-stir crisis situations. Tar Heel fans have endured an onslaught of teasing and accusations about “fake classes” since the Final Four weekend began. From a sport crisis communication standpoint, there is much to unpack here. There is also a lot to learn, not the least of which includes use of fanship to help overcome ongoing threats to the university’s reputation by providing students, staff, and faculty with factual information. Survey data collected both before and following the UNC-CH championship game substantiate these claims.

Sport fanship levels are generally lukewarm among undergraduate and graduate students at UNC-CH, according to survey data I collected last November. This year’s championship win offered an opportunity for a comparative analysis of fanship levels and crisis perceptions during a heightened time of attention and success. Just 36 hours after winning the NCAA championship, I had the same sample of UNC-CH students re-take my survey, and preliminary analysis suggests a significant uptick in fanship levels compared to the November results.

Fanship is measured in the survey by asking a battery of questions concerning the individual’s typical interactions with and preferences for integrating sport into his/her daily life. Reported loyalty to UNC-CH sports teams notably increased following the championship. Students also reported an increased awareness of the scandal following the championship, and more than 20% reported being the recipient of a direct comment from another individual concerning the paper courses scandal.

Media reports leading up to the day of the championship game reflect this as well. The New York Times, NPR, and USA Today (to name a few) all mentioned the paper courses as an ongoing academic scandal when reporting about this year’s Final Four and championship games.

Students at UNC-CH are left to exercise a lot of evangelizing and justification tactics in response to this reigniting of the scandal and have expressed how these confrontations and accusations have effected them during the playoffs.

Students shared the following thoughts in the survey:

“The people who I discuss the event with are usually people who dislike UNC in sports. They use it as a defense when we beat them by insulting our academic integrity. The biggest problem I have with the event is that it is an honor to attend this university because of the high academic rigor, but it is difficult to defend it to outsiders when something like this happens.”

“A lot of people outside of the university make comments and jokes about our students and athletes not going to class. I’m not sure how deeply the people who make those comments/jokes actually believe that we don’t go to class, but I think that it shows that the larger society is not aware of the measures UNC has taken to make sure our classes are legitimate. If UNC classes are going to be even harder now that the university has to prove that our classes are real, I would at least like people to acknowledge that. It upsets me that my quality education is often devalued on social media, and at times in larger media settings, because people are still upset about the scandal and aren’t aware of the measures the university has taken to prevent it from happening again.”

The university has taken steps to address the issues reported in the investigation by creating more rigorous academic structures, including improvements in “course integrity,” and a workgroup has been tasked to regularly review the 21 Academic Processes for Student Athletes. Current students, as well as faculty and administration, are still feeling the brunt of these past mistakes. Academic standards have been tightened, as faculty and administrators have worked to restructure and improve written guidelines and documentation processes. But most people do not know these actions have been taken unless they speak to a current student, faculty member, administrator, or athlete who has endured this process.

As another student noted in the survey:

“I always want to defend UNC for the issue, but I never feel like I have enough knowledge on the issue to counter back what people say.”

Sports crisis communicators can learn from this by first recognizing that even in jubilant times, an institution must still face its checkered past. Communicators would do well to equip their base to help handle the ongoing effects of a scandal. Collegiate sport creates community and increases student involvement, and winning collegiate sports teams further inflate these levels. Integration of interpersonal speaking points, even years following a scandal, is suggested for times of heightened attention—especially surrounding sports. Such an open and honest continuation of dialogue will help empower students to aid in reputation repair while cheering on their winning team.

Jennifer Harker is a doctoral student in the School of Media and Journalism at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She studies public relations and sport communication at the praxis of mediated crisis discourse. She can be reached at jlharker@live.unc.edu or on Twitter @jennifer_harker.

Photos by Nathan Klima, a sophomore photojournalism student in the School of Media and Journalism at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Klima serves as a photojournalist for the UNC-CH student newspaper, The Daily Tar Heel.