the journalist Lisa Guerrero recently presented her autobiographical book “Guerrero: My Path to Being Brave” (Guerrero: my path to being brave)in which the woman born in Chicago but of Chilean blood recounts her complicated path to become an award-winning investigative reporter who has obtained dozens of awards in the United States.
Lisa Guerrero has been a media personality for decades, most notably for her run on the syndicated show Inside Edition, and the book’s release has put her back in the news. But around 20 years ago she became depressed, suffered a lot and even thought about taking her own life, as read in the book published by Hachette Books.
Guerrero detailed those times in a talk with La Opinión stressing that her harsh revelations are intended to help other young women, especially Latinas, not make the same mistakes that she
Especially dramatic was what happened to Guerrero during 2003. That year she worked as the pitch reporter for Monday Night Football. of the NFL for ABC, this after having been a sports reporter and host for companies in southern California for about a decade.
“I was subjected to a lot of unfair criticism, and I think a lot of it was racially motivated,” says Guerrero, who recalls that even before making her debut there was already a lot of rejection towards her. It is worth mentioning that In addition to being a sports journalist, she had already been an actress, model, and even an NFL cheerleader with the Rams..
“I think that calling myself Guerrero and having long hair and a glamorous appearance is part of what my mother was, it’s part of my heritage,” she says. “I believe that Latinas, in different ways, are more comfortable with their sexuality and their femininity than other women. I felt very comfortable and safe, and I think that bothered a lot of the traditional media when they talked about me.”
Lisa Guerrero, the mistake in her debut and a downward spiral
Guerrero’s debut on Monday Night Football broadcasts was on September 4, 2003 in a game between the New York Jets and the Washington team in the nation’s capital. At the end of the game, she interviewed winning quarterback Patrick Ramsey of the Washington team, but when asked about receiver Laveranues Coles, who excelled in the game, she said “your former teammate.”
Although Guerrero corrected the air immediately, his blunder unleashed a barrage of ridicule and criticism.
“That mistake gave all the critics all the ammunition they needed to say, ‘Come on, she’s a dork, a pretty face, she doesn’t know about sports.’ And that, plus having a boss yelling at me, who was very verbally abusive to me, resulted in the start of a downward spiral. I got depressed, I got anxious, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat, I was scared every day of being fired,” Guerrero recounts in a chat with La Opinión.
Guerrero says her producer yelled at her all the time during games through her headset because he wanted her to say everything the way he wanted her to, ordering her to memorize the comments.
The worst came in a later transmission. Lisa Guerrero had a dangerous bleed in the middle of the game. She was pregnant.
“I had a miscarriage fieldside at a Monday Night Football game, in front of 40 million people who didn’t know it,” reveals the then 39-year-old journalist.
“I went to the referees’ bathroom at halftime of the game and I was bleeding,” Guerrero adds in his story. “But instead of calling an ambulance and instead of telling my producer that I was having a medical emergency, I covered it up, ignored the pain. and I came out in the second half of the game to continue reporting because of how much I feared criticism. I thought they were going to fire me for this. I was very embarrassed”.
The journalist, depressed, almost took her own life
She was fired by ABC after that first season and says that the next year was a nightmare for her: “I was ashamed, I thought I had failed the name of my family, that I was not a Warrior, and I almost took my own life that anus”.
She tells in the book and in the talk that while driving his vehicle on PCH, California’s famous coastal highway, he almost drove off a cliff.
Guerrero says that instead, he stopped the car and called his father, told him everything that was happening to him. “That was the first step in my recovery, talking to my dad and talking to a therapist,” he says.
That was the end of Lisa Guerrero in sports journalism. But it was not the end of an outstanding career as a reporter. How did she manage to reinvent herself? She explains it in the interview.
“I wrote that in my book because I want people to know that there is always someone on the receiving end of criticism and verbal abuse, or ‘trolling’ on social media, or when you yell at someone. And those consequences can be deadly,” she adds.
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