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Who has ever been involved in a perfect ' news reporting ' moment shown on television? I know I haven't.
My first involvement with a news reporter from a local news station here in Lincoln Nebraska involved me meeting the reporters at Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital to give them a live hands-on demonstration on how a C-5 quadriplegic can get behind the wheel of a vehicle and drive using specialized adaptive equipment. Back in 1997, this was a pretty impressive thing and definitely newsworthy of television airtime showing all the Walkies of Lincoln how we cripples can get by doing a lot more things than expected.
The mistake of this particular news event, was heard within the first sentence coming from the news anchors mouth on the six o'clock news that evening, when he said "I have had opportunity to be with paraplegic Robert Rieck as he drove a vehicle for the first time since his accident in 1996 leaving him Paralyzed." Aft the reporter wrongfully mentioned I was a paraplegic instead of a quadriplegic, it killed the whole impact of the whole story for me, and quite possibly many others.
First of all, big deal a paraplegic is driving; that's not interesting! Paraplegics have complete full function of their arms -- I and Lincoln knows they can drive! Then the screwup followed by the news coverage now being boring.
Recently, myself and many other teammates of the Midwest Rugby Rebels (rugby team--I specifically inform for reasons explained later), had the opportunity to be part of a public demonstration at a second annual adaptive sports and recreation fair. This fair had many demonstrations like wheelchair dancing, yoga, mouth sketching, wheelchair basketball, quad rugby, a sip-n-puff mouth joystick demonstration for Sony PlayStation, to mention some. I believe there were two news stations consisting of Channel 8 news and Channel 10 news doing some interviews and film coverage of this event.
The Channel 10 news station coverage was like only 20 seconds, and it was at the tail-end of all other news stories putting its importance and anticipated public interest very low. They showed very quick scenes of wheelchair basketball, and then showed the backside of one of my rugby teammates just sitting on a sideline getting taped up. If I didn't know anything about quad rugby I would say it's pretty boring after I watched what this news station showed. It's not like this news station didn't have the perfect opportunities to film some pretty intensive action. We had rugby players sideswiping others, and literally lifting them off of their wheels to throw them out of bounds! We had strong fast impacts that left us in our chairs mangled together! Did the news get this coverage? No! We as a team could have created a much more curiously seeking audience if a one of us rugby players were picking our nose during the aired coverage. These viewers would take to the Internet and e-mail their friends this embarrassing moment, but hell, why not, they will remember us as the Midwest Rugby Rebels. One good thing Channel 10 news did was interview my friend Luke Harms as he demonstrated the sip-n-puff mouth joystick for competitive PlayStation gaming -- cool.
The Channel 8 news station decided to bump this story all the way up, making the coverage the top news story. Sounds great, doesn't it? Part of the coverage involved an interview with a respected teammate Jason. Jason said all the perfect things that needed to be said in a really good relaxed confident voice, but it is still to be seen how effective this interview was informing viewers about a local rugby team called the Midwest Rugby Rebels. The reason I say this is because the news reporter referred to us as a wheelchair basketball team called the Quad Rugby Rebels. Now how can you screw that one up? Our chosen sport is smack in the middle of our team name -- Midwest Rugby Rebels! I mean, make an educated guess! Would you think a team that carries the name ' Tennessee Table Tennis Twisters ' could be associated with any other sport than table tennis? Maybe soccer? Would you flip out if I said there was a football team called ' Georgia Golf Gophers? ' Or how about a baseball team called the ' Big Bowling Bozos ?' I don't think so! To top it off, we gave this reporter one of our team's brochures listing our team name, giving background information about the sport of quad rugby, and being informative about who the Midwest Rugby Rebels are. This is another example of how bad reporting can make a real interesting story go bunk.
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