Here’s one way to make online harassment crash and burn.
Leslie Horton, a Canadian on-air traffic reporter, is getting praise on social media for calling out a viewer who she says has been sending her “nasty” messages for years.
In a video that’s gained steam online, Horton can be seen doing her daily traffic report for the Global News network when she casually notifies viewers about a message she’d received.
“Just gonna respond to an email that I just got, saying ‘Congratulations on your pregnancy,’” Horton, 59, reads. “‘If you’re gonna wear old bus driver pants, you have to expect emails like this.’”
Horton, in what she later described to “Good Morning America” as a “visceral response,” decided to put this viewer in their place.
“So, thanks for that,” Horton began. “No, I’m not pregnant. I actually lost my uterus to cancer last year. And this is what women of my age look like.”
“So if it is offensive to you, that is unfortunate,” she continued. “Think about the emails that you send.”
Horton, who is now cancer-free, told “GMA” on Wednesday that she would typically ignore messages like this on-air, but this particular viewer especially grinds her gears. So she made a spur-of-the-moment decision to respond.
“It is a man [who] has been sending nasty emails for about four years now,” she said. “It’s been a pretty constant stream of emails.”
Horton added that being diagnosed with endometrial cancer in December 2021, and then beating it, gave her a new perspective on life.
“Any time you have a battle with cancer, [it] takes a toll on many, many levels,” she told “GMA.” “You have to figure out who you are going forward. Life becomes ‘before cancer,’ and ‘after cancer.’”
“I have a lot more gratitude for life,” she added. “And it also taught me, I think, to be really clear on who I am and what’s important to me, and what I will expect and behavior from other people. And that brings us to responding to an inappropriate email.”