When reporting on a story, especially a controversial one, journalists can never make everyone happy, WRTV-6 reporter Rafael Sanchez said.
"Your job really, whatever you do in the field of journalism, is just to be fair," Sanchez said. "It's a very difficult balancing act, but one that must be done."
As keynote speaker for the Spring 2006 Kaleidoscope Diversity Conference in the Department of Telecommunications on Friday, Sanchez discussed his experience as a Latino in the workplace.
"This whole issue of diversity is not a race thing," Sanchez said. "It's not about whether you're black, Asian or white. Its about what you really know."
The conference - which was organized by five students in the TCOM 390 class and hosted by several students in the TCOM 204 class at Ball State University - featured several speakers on topics ranging from orientation and religion in the media to workplace diversity and war coverage. This is the fifth conference at the university, said freshman Whitney Bissell, conference director.
"It really gives you a good perspective for a different culture, especially of what you need to go into the business," Bissell said. "It gives you a really good look at people's point of views and everything."
Sanchez said he covered the immigration rally help in Indianapolis a few weeks ago for WRTV-6.
"At WRTV-6, I'm the only Latino reporter," Sanchez said. "I've never been asked to do a Latino story, and even on that day, I had to fight to do the Latino story."
His role at WRTV-6 is unlike his other jobs, for which he was hired to cover Hispanic issues such as migrant workers. He said the station managers didn't understand that although he spoke Spanish, he came from a different culture than the migrant workers. Sanchez's parents were from the Dominican Republic, and he grew up in New York City.
"The Caribbean Spanish is not the same thing as Mexican Spanish," he said. "I could not get it because we could communicate, but culturally it was different for me too."
Sanchez said he volunteered to cover the immigration rally because he wanted to help, and having a reporter who spoke Spanish would make reporting the event easier. He tried to get both angles of the story - from those marching and those opposed to the marchers.
"Diversity touches us all in many different ways," Sanchez said. "It is key that you be as well educated as possible."
Sometimes, though, reporters don't have time to seek out every group involved in a breaking news story, he said.
"My job is to try to get a divergent view, as quickly as possible, at that snapshot in time," Sanchez said.
And sometimes that view comes from the ground of a war zone.
KNSD-TV photojournalist Mike Terrel, who traveled from San Diego to be at Friday's conference, described his past experiences reporting in Iraq aboard the San Diego-based navy ship USS Constellation. Terrel will be based out of London in June with NBC News and will begin reporting out of Baghdad most of the year, he said.
"It's a whole different world," Terrel said. "It's a whole different realm."
Terrel - who will undergo training by British ex-commandos regarding first aid and the treatment of gunshot and shrapnel wounds - explained how journalists in war zones avoided becoming military targets by often rehearsing lines for stand-ups before they got to the scene.
"You're in and out," Terrel said. "You stay nowhere longer than 15 minutes because they figure after 15 minutes, [the enemies] have a long enough time to figure out where you are."
Terrel recalled the first time cameras were allowed inside the ready room of a navy ship as pilots were being briefed before landing, and how all communication aboard the navy ship was shut down for 12 hours when an attack was launched.
Terrel, who grew up in Indianapolis and couldn't have imagined moving to international news reporting from local reporting for years, showed tapes of himself and fellow reporter Steve Walker and encouraged students to network to advance in the field.
Diversity plays a large role in war coverage, said associate professor Maria Williams-Hawkins, who teaches the TCOM 204 classes.
"It's not just about color," she said. "It's about seeing things from a different perspective."
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