One Final Thing About Arrington
Everyone has covered the Lavar Arrington motorcycle crash. I wasn’t even going to mention it, but the coverage of it has bothered me. There were two ways it was covered. The “get well soon” angle like here at Hog’s Haven.
Then there was the way everyone else who covered it. Sportscenter showed a shot of Lavar’s mangled motorcycle and then followed it up with a chart showing recent motorcycle wrecks in the NFL including Kellen Winslow Jr’s and Big Ben. They even showed tape of Ben being released from the hospital. Unfortunately, I don’t have a You Tube clip of it to prove it, but trust me. It happened.
The problem with this kind of journalism is that Lavar’s accident was very different. Winslow and Ben (notice I am doing my best not to try to spell his last name) were under contract. Those contracts specifically or generally bar motorcycle riding. Arrington is a free agent at this time (and likely actually ended his career because by the time he’s healthy, he’ll be four years out from his last good season) and can ride a motorcycle, jump out of an airplane, wrestle an alligator, have sex with Paris Hilton, or any other dangerous activity.
By lumping him in with those guys, ESPN implied that Lavar was doing something wrong simply by getting on the thing (though there are reports Arrington had no motorcycle permit which is definitely bad if true). I hate that kind of journalism, and it is usually in the name of adding extra video to a television program. The belief is that we’ll be bored if we have to watch a guy read from a prompter for too long so they constantly switch it up. Probably true, but it means you have to be careful and ESPN wasn’t.
Get well soon, Lavar. Drive around in one of these for awhile:
Keep working, great job with this useful blog!
March 16th, 2009 at 12:54 pm