During her appearance on PH, Podemos hablar (Telefe), Karina Mazzocco recalled one of the most distressing episodes of her professional career: the death threat she received while hosting A la tarde, the current affairs program she worked on for five years. The journalist described how she experienced that situation, the security measures that were taken, and the impact it had on her personal life.
It all began when Andy Kusnetzoff asked the guests to step forward if they had ever been threatened. Among those who answered the prompt was Mazzocco, who shared details of an episode she still remembers with concern.
“Sometime something was said on the show that bothered someone, and then I was threatened. They told me: ‘Now I’ll walk through the channel door and I’ll empty this magazine into your head,’ with a photo of the guy with the thing like this…,” she said, recalling the intimidating message that had arrived along with an image.
“A very frightening thing, very frightening,” she added about the experience she had to go through.
The complaint and the security measures after the threat
Mazzocco explained that after receiving the threat, she decided to recount what happened on air. From that moment, preventive measures were activated and a complaint was filed in order to identify the person responsible.
“A kind of SWAT, the police, came in; the complaint was filed,” she recounted about the operation carried out after the episode.
However, the investigation did not manage to identify who had sent the message. “Nothing happened, unfortunately, as is often the case in many situations. They didn’t find anything at all,” she stated.
The journalist also referred to the context in which the intimidation occurred and explained that she had begun tackling a delicate topic from her professional role. Although she preferred not to name the sector involved, she acknowledged that the situation led her to step back to prevent the conflict from affecting her personal life.
“I publicly said, ‘Stay calm, I don’t want any trouble neither with you nor with anyone in your field.’ I was venturing into a topic… I don’t even want to mention what field it is, because it’s very heavy. I started touching a thread, the tip of the little knot, and I only gave it the first tug; I understood that you don’t mess with that; I don’t have the nerve to withstand that, it’s not my thing,” she expressed.
Later, she summarized the decision she took in light of what happened: “The message reached me and I have no problem saying: ‘Okay, I acknowledge receipt, I won’t get involved there anymore’.”
Karina Mazzocco spoke about the personal cost of her journalistic work
Despite deciding to distance herself from that investigation, Mazzocco acknowledged that the situation created a contradiction for her as a communicator, since she believed it was important to be able to publicly address certain topics.
“Unfortunately, it was still important as a communicator, in a journalistic role, to step in and file a complaint regarding a topic that tends to occur a lot,” she reflected.
The presenter also clarified that she does not regret the five years she spent on A la tarde, although she acknowledged that that period was accompanied by difficult situations, such as confrontations, letters of formal notice, and mediations.
As part of the preventive measures adopted after the threat, she was also assigned a police detail at the front of her home.
With her testimony on PH, Podemos hablar, Mazzocco revisited a career-defining experience and exposed the difficulties that can arise when journalistic work tackles sensitive issues. Her account highlighted both the emotional impact of threats and the choices she had to make to protect her safety.
