Real-Life Decision Making
You're a young sportscaster, trying to make a name for yourself. Some of
your older colleagues warned you that sometimes people will try to influence
what you talk about or how you portray certain teams. They said to just report
what happened and don't worry about those people.
You're having a great day. You're filling in for the regular sports anchor
of the evening news. This is an exciting opportunity! You're putting together
a highlight reel of an afternoon game for the evening broadcast.
It was a thrilling baseball game with the home team, the Marlons, and long-time
rival team, the Angel Sox. The Marlons were doing well at first, but really
started losing their steam by the fifth, at which point the Sox caught up
and ended up taking the game with a 6-4 lead. The Marlons spent the last three
innings fumbling, fouling and making errors.
Despite the home team doing so poorly, it was a great game. But as you're
putting together the highlights, you realize it's not making the Marls, as
they're known around town, look too great. Well, it wasn't their best game,
you think to yourself as you put together the unfortunate highlights of the
last half of the game.
Then the phone rings. It's someone who won't say who they are, but they're
saying you really need to focus on the good stuff the Marls did in the early
part of the game. Don't focus too much on the errors -- and especially don't
mention the errors made by first baseman Paul Westernberg, as he's really
self-conscious and that could really hurt his career. The caller hints that
your job will be a lot easier in the future if you just paint the team in
a nice light and don't report on their mistakes. You wonder if he's an important
figure in the local sports scene.
"Decision-making skills are also important," says Chris Burnett. Burnett
does play-by-play sportscasting.
"A lot of times when you're out tracking down your pieces to your story
you need to determine what shots would be good and useful and what shots you
could skip. What usually happens is they will get their story from the news
director in the morning and have eight or so hours to film, edit and hand
it in to production. It's all about the vision you have for that project and
how well you can accomplish it."
What do you do?