JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Thursday, July 24, 2025

Athletes must be media literate

by

2510 days ago
20180909

With the sig­nif­i­cant im­pact sport­ing per­son­al­i­ties are hav­ing on the world to­day from ath­letes to coach­es, of­fi­cials and ex­ec­u­tives, it has be­come al­most a ba­sic ne­ces­si­ty for them to pos­sess good me­dia skills and un­der­stand­ing.

In fact, con­duct­ing post-game/event news me­dia in­ter­views is not an op­tion for most pro ath­letes, it is a con­trac­tu­al re­quire­ment. And this has more to do with be­ing me­dia lit­er­ate as to just be­ing me­dia savvy. Me­dia lit­er­a­cy deals more with un­der­stand­ing how the me­dia works, an ap­pre­ci­a­tion of me­dia in­flu­ence, the abil­i­ty to cre­ate and pro­duce me­dia and an aware­ness of per­son­al me­dia habits among oth­er items. This is dif­fer­ent to sim­ply be­ing able to dance your way through an in­ter­view by us­ing a lot of hand ges­tures and say­ing a few sen­tences that you per­ceive to be cool.

Part of any pro­fes­sion­al ath­lete's salary comes not just from per­for­mance on the field or track, but al­so from their PR skills in pro­mot­ing their team and sport in the me­dia. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the pro ath­letes who end up with the most lu­cra­tive ca­reers are able to lever­age their ex­per­tise and name ID in­to long-term TV an­a­lyst po­si­tions and cor­po­rate spokesper­son gigs. Sha­ka His­lop is a clas­sic ex­am­ple. He’s no longer play­ing which robs this gen­er­a­tion of see­ing his ex­ploits be­tween the posts but we can hard­ly get enough of him when he’s speak­ing be­fore the cam­eras as an an­a­lyst on ES­PN.

It has to be not­ed that some of the best that sport has seen are very ar­tic­u­late and they have it all down when it comes to han­dling them­selves be­fore the me­dia. Take Bri­an Lara for in­stance, very ar­tic­u­late and smooth and has a way of mak­ing you want to take in every­thing he is say­ing. He al­so knows when to ad­dress cer­tain mat­ters in the me­dia and when not to. And say what you want about him, Dwight Yorke is al­so among the top of the list when it comes to de­liv­ery in in­ter­views or state­ments. Sure­ly it is a fac­tor be­hind Man­ches­ter Unit­ed mak­ing him one of their in­ter­na­tion­al am­bas­sadors which see him rep­re­sent­ing the club in dif­fer­ent mar­kets across the globe which nat­u­ral­ly means he has to speak on the club's be­half.

De­spite the im­por­tance of good me­dia skills, sad­ly in T&T and the Caribbean, we haven't reached a point where enough em­pha­sis is placed on this as­pect of de­vel­op­ment for our sport­ing per­son­al­i­ties. And this to­tal­ly aside from be­ing pop­u­lar on so­cial me­dia plat­forms.

Hav­ing a pop­u­lar In­sta­gram page with 100,000 fol­low­ers will not pro­tect you when you come across like a joke or with­out class on cam­era fol­low­ing the match or dur­ing a press brief­ing or even when you are asked to speak be­fore a stu­dents pop­u­la­tion. Sim­ple things like know­ing how to an­swer ques­tions dur­ing a post-match or post-event in­ter­view, stick­ing to the point and prop­er tone and de­liv­ery are dif­fi­cult for many of our ath­letes.

There is a sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence in watch­ing some of our ath­letes speak as com­pared to watch­ing those on the US or Eu­ro­pean cir­cuit. Ath­letes should be able to know how to shape a com­pelling me­dia mes­sage. "We had a de­cent per­for­mance ” or “it just wasn’t our day“ will not cut it any­more. On the oth­er hand, the sports re­porters al­so need to be able to ask the right ques­tions that will bring the best re­spons­es out of peo­ple. The most ef­fec­tive way to im­prove your ques­tion­ing is by study­ing the best sports re­porters and how they do it. Good ques­tions lead to good an­swers which leads to good sto­ries. Bot­tom line. As a sports re­porter one al­ways need to work on your writ­ing, your lis­ten­ing, your ques­tion­ing and your adapt­abil­i­ty – all of which are pri­ma­ry skills but this top­ic is for an­oth­er day.

Fans al­ways want to feel en­gaged by the ath­lete and whether we like it or not, it is be­com­ing hard­er to ig­nore the me­dia. As Per­for­mance in Mind UK puts it across, “Rather than hid­ing away from me­dia, learn­ing how to use it ef­fec­tive­ly; to pro­tect your rep­u­ta­tion, to boost your fund­ing and to proac­tive­ly en­hance your per­for­mance can be re­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial for an ath­lete. It is im­por­tant for ath­letes and of­fi­cials to learn and un­der­stand how the me­dia works. This will take away some of the is­sues you may face, help you see that of­ten neg­a­tive com­ments are not per­son­al and help you to make the me­dia work for you rather than the oth­er way round.

It is im­por­tant for sport­ing or­ga­ni­za­tions and var­i­ous team man­age­ment to un­der­stand the im­por­tance here even though it may be left up to the ath­lete them­selves to make the ef­fort. Pro­fes­sion­al teams abroad from the biggest foot­ball clubs to NBA, NFL, you name it, make it a pri­or­i­ty when it comes to de­vel­op­ing their ath­letes away from the train­ing pitch. It is about time we start do­ing the same. It will sure­ly bring ben­e­fits to not just the in­di­vid­ual but al­so the or­ga­ni­za­tions and the fans.

Shaun Fuentes is a for­mer FI­FA Me­dia Of­fi­cer at the 2010 FI­FA World Cup in South Africa. He is al­so cur­rent­ly a CON­CA­CAF Com­pe­ti­tions Me­dia Of­fi­cer and has trav­elled ex­ten­sive­ly be­cause of sport and me­dia over the past eigh­teen years. He is al­so a cer­ti­fied me­dia train­er for ath­letes.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored