The Boston Globe sports section runs a weekly feature called, “What They Were Thinking,” in which athletes recall their many emotions at specific moments of particular sporting events. Golf fans and anyone with a sense of integrity might want to ask what the executives of a Rhode Island TV station were thinking after they recreated highlights of the recent Ocean State Women’s Golf Association championship match and ran them on a July 14 newscast as if they were real.
WPRI Channel 12 and its affiliate Fox Television’s WNAC TV 64 ran footage of Samantha Morrell and Ali Prazak putting on the 18th green at West Kingston’s Laurel Lane Golf Club in the final showdown of the event, according to Southern Rhode Island Newspapers (thanks to Jay Busbee for the tip). Except that the station engineered the putting contest, which sports director Eric Murphy narrated as if the telecast were on the up-and-up, and did not even bother to stage the faked event on the correct hole.
You don’t have to be a journalism junkie to know that the WPRI stunt was a serious no-no.
“You have to be truthful to the viewers,” University of Rhode Island journalism professor and former WLNE Channel 6 reporter Barbara Meagher told SRIN. Meagher suggested the culprits could have used the video with a caveat that “after the tournament was over, [the golfers] showed us some of their key [shots].’ You can’t make viewers believe that it was during the tournament.”
In his rather hollow defense, WPRI news director Joe Abouzeid told SRIN that the footage was for an upcoming story about the players that reporter Sara Hogan had not yet aired.
“It is not our policy to recreate or reenact ‘highlights,’” Abouzeid said of the station’s decision to recreate and reenact highlights. “It is, however, our policy to specifically and accurately describe and identify the video that we present. It appears in this case that although the video was not described as highlights, it should not have aired in this context.”
What was Abouzeid’s first clue? Perhaps someone belatedly showed him a copy of the Radio, Television and Digital News Association’s code of ethics, which clearly states that journalists should not “present images or sounds that are reenacted without informing the public.”
The real golf competition, by the way, never made it to the 18th hole. Morrell made a par putt to close out the match and win her second consecutive OSWGA title on the 16th.
Hogan, who got to the course late because she was covering the R.I. Men’s Amateur Golf Championship, filmed the award ceremony and then asked the two to take their putters to the 18th to “create some television magic,” said SRIN. Morrell, for her part, believed the recreation was “kind of weird,” she told SRIN.
“We tried to make it like the real thing, but I think we did a good job with our acting,” Morell said. “I think we deserve some credit for it; that was really realistic.”
Check out WPRI’s video here.
(Emily Kay is a regular contributor to New England Golf Monthly. Check her out on the Waggle Room, Boston Golf Examiner, National Golf Examiner, and GottaGoGolf websites. You may also follow Kay on Twitter @golfexaminer.)
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