Goaltending
"Parents may not realize it, but their soccer-playing kids may be exposed to a hidden danger every time they take the field, a danger that could hurt or even kill."
Video: So opens the Web version of a story that appeared on the "Early Show" yesterday about the dangers of soccer goals. The goals, the story notes, are heavy, and they can fall and hurt kids. Fair enough. But then there's this:
The U.S. Soccer Federation says 14 million kids aged 6-17 play the sport in this country, with up to 500,000 goals in use.So, roughly, one kid out of the 14 million who play soccer are killed by goals each year. That's not nothing, of course. But statistically it's pretty insignificant.Soccer goal tip-over accidents kill at least one child every year, and injure 200, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
That isn't to say this isn't information worth knowing for parents: Soccer goals can be dangerous, and it's helpful for the "Early Show" to offer tips on how to make sure they are safe. If that one in 14 million kids who does get killed happens to be yours – the on-air version of the story, which you can watch by clicking on video box, offers a wrenching interview with the parents of a boy who was killed by a falling goal – the statistics don't much matter.
But the story could have be done without trafficking in the alarmist Your Kids Are At Risk rhetoric that the makes the media such an easy target. The on-air version began with this: "14 million children play organized soccer in America, but there could be a serious safety hazard on the field that is putting their lives in danger." Local-news fear-mongering ledes like that make the perils of soccer goals sound a lot worse than they actually are. And they contribute to the perception that the media are so interested in scaring viewers whenever possible that they should simply be tuned out.