Shauna Hunt tells interlocutors who uttered vulgar internet meme – one of whom has since been fired from his job – ‘It’s a disgusting thing to say, it’s degrading to women’

A Canadian television sports reporter took her on-air trolls to task on Sunday after falling victim to a prank that has overwhelmingly targeted female live television reporters over the past year and four months and appears to brazenly glorify and celebrate the sexual assault of women.

The prank involved a man saying a vulgar phrase on air while Shauna Hunt, a reporter with Toronto-based television news channel CityNews, interviewed fans after a soccer match.

One man involved in the incident has already been identified by his employers, electricity provider Hydro One, and has been fired as a result. The man in question is an assistant management engineer who makes $106,510 a year, the Toronto Star reported.

Shortly after Hunt began her post-match live coverage in Toronto on Sunday, a soccer fan bombed her reporting frame and interrupted her interview with fans by casually uttering the words “fuck her right in the pussy”.

Hunt was quick to react. After voicing her objection by repeatedly saying “hey”, she spotted a group of men who appeared to have been waiting nearby for the prank to unfold, and confronted them.

The ensuing exchange was also caught on camera in a video released by CityNews that has since gone viral.

“It’s a disgusting thing to say, it’s degrading to women,” Hunt said to one of those men defending the act as entertaining and harmless.

“You would humiliate me on live television?” she asks.

“I am sick of it. I get this every single day. Ten times a day by rude guys like you,” Hunt says to her interviewee.

Although her calling out of men who appear to think the practice of bombing live television newscasts by saying the phrase – a phenomenon that since January 2014 has become an internet meme, also referred to as FHRITP, or #fhritp – is in many ways cathartic, her male interviewee’s response is not.

“It has nothing to do with you, it has everything to do with everyone else,” he says, seemingly referring to the amount of fun had by him and his male companions both standing beside him, watching television and waiting for the video online.

In a scenario echoing much of gender-based violence, lack of female consent and negative emotions are either overlooked or cause for more satisfaction.

The practice of FHRITP kicked off in January 2014, when an Ohio Fox news male reporter who was being broadcast live – but had not realized he was – told his cameraman that he “would fuck” the missing 20-year-old woman they were reporting on.

“I don’t care if she’s 20. Hell, I’d fuck her. You can’t say you wouldn’t fuck her. Maybe that’s what I’ll do when they find her. I will go and I’ll fuck her. I’ll fuck her right in the pussy,” John Cain, the since-fired reporter, said on air.

The video has been watched over 3m times on YouTube and appears to have kicked off a trend of male interruptions of mainly female live newscasters in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, all proudly saying the same, offensive words.

YouTube abounds with videos of the pranks.

John Cain has proudly become one of the movement’s faces and can be seen on his own personal website sporting a T-shirt with the letters FHRITP.

Hunt: the interruptions are ‘overwhelming’

In an interview on Toronto-based television station City Television on Tuesday morning, Hunt said having to listen to men say the phrase to her has become a norm on the job, as it has for other female and male colleagues working different beats.

“Every single day, people are yelling this at us. Men drive by and roll down their car windows and just yell it at you on the street,” she said, describing the phenomenon as “overwhelming”.

On Tuesday, Ontario’s largest electricity provider, Hydro One, said it had identified one of the men as being one of its employees and has fired him as a result of the incident.

The now out-of-work engineer is featured in the video saying “I don’t care, it’s fucking hilarious,” later telling Hunt she is lucky nobody put a vibrator in her ear, apparently referring to a similar video incident in the UK.

“My mom would die laughing,” he says after Hunt asks him what his mother would make of this.

Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, the largest sports and entertainment company in Canada that owns the stadium in front of which Sunday’s interactions occurred, issued a statement Tuesday, publicized on Twitter, stating they were working to identify the individuals involved and would ban them from the facility.

They added they would also work to provide “extra security” to female reporters doing live hits during games.

While no reporters have pressed criminal charges, Toronto police told CityNews on Monday a variety of charges – including breach of the peace, harassment, sexual harassment or mischief – could be laid, should Hunt or one of her colleagues be inclined to take such steps.

Kingston police in Canada’s eastern Ontario tweeted on Monday that the crime of causing disturbance would likely apply in the case, writing that “media partners should not have to deal with #FHRITP”.

Following a pushback by a member of the public who minimized the type of encounter with the excuse that “boys will be boys”, the Kingston police Twitter account quickly quipped back that “boys will be boys” may be a “weak excuse for public sexual harassment”.

Last November, an 18-year-old man in Pennsylvania was charged by police with a misdemeanor of “falsifying a report” after he executed a similar prank on a female television news journalist, but denied it when questioned by police. The denial is what led to the charges.