The media's (and the public's) misconception of FIRST

[Michael Corsetto]

I originally brought this view up in this thread about a specific news feature about 1114 (jump to 6:22 for the actual report). Karthik recommended I start a separate thread about the issue, so here is my post from that thread...

Great feature, I think it gave a fairly good synopsis of what the competition is like and what 1114 is like in particular. There is one point, however, that I would like to make. At the beginning of the segment, the anchor says "A group of students from blah blah have designed a robot blah blah". My point here is this, I think its great that FIRST is getting the word out about its program, it is an amazing program indeed. But in almost every piece of media coverage I've seen, the mentors are never mentioned. It has always been what the students have done, and not what the mentors and students did together. Inspiration is never mentioned, it always seems to be about winning. Now is this FIRST's strategy? Maybe, but I can't blame people who are new to the program for thinking that this is solely a high school competition, because that's how its advertised. So what do people think, should FIRST be more proactive in getting the real message out, or should they continue to draw people in with a false image and then tell them what its really all about?

Mike C.