Injuries: Media Framing, Research Paper Example

Abstract

This textual analysis looks at how the media has emphatically criticized the National Football League and Commissioner Robert Goodell in its advancements to protect past, present and future players’ health, and safety on and off the field. Common media frames use injury as a common defense on the players’ behalf. News outlets have framed the recent NFL lockout, centered on economic distribution, as the greedy owners vs. the poor exploited players. In detail, this paper discusses how various news sources scrutinize the leagues effort, involvement, and progression towards the injury problem, primarily head and spinal cord damage. It is the common frame that the NFL management cares only about maximizing economic gain and achieving ultimate American sport stature, rather than individual’s personal health. Conversely, the public wants the game to be safer and discourage violent hit, while simultaneously keeping its gritty integrity and passionate emotion. Furthermore, this study provides an in depth understanding of players’ personal accounts, both past and present, on the mental and physical pressures that run parallel with the game. At stake, in this case, are the campaigns of injury awareness and the actions taken.

NFL Injuries: Media Framing

This textual analysis looks at how the media has emphatically criticized the National Football League and Commissioner Robert Goodell in its advancements to protect past, present and future players’ health, and safety on and off the field. Common media frames use injury as a common defense on the players’ behalf. News outlets have framed the recent NFL lockout, centered on economic distribution, as the greedy owners vs. the poor exploited players. In detail, this paper discusses how various news sources scrutinize the leagues effort, involvement, and progression towards the injury problem, primarily head and spinal cord damage. It is the common frame that the NFL management cares only about maximizing economic gain and achieving ultimate American sport stature, rather than individual’s personal health. Conversely, the public wants the game to be safer and discourage violent hit, while simultaneously keeping its gritty integrity and passionate emotion. Furthermore, this study provides an in depth understanding of players’ personal accounts, both past and present, on the mental and physical pressures that run parallel with the game. At stake, in this case, are the campaigns of injury awareness and the actions taken by the NFL to protect its players.

Research Questions

• How has the media influenced addressing the injury problem?
• Are some media outlets framing the issue too harshly?
• What has the media done to help or hurt the problem?
• What additional media frames are there?

Introduction

It is reported that NFL players union states that there has been a rise in the number of injuries during the 2010 season with an increase from 3.2 to 3.6 per week per team and the share of players injured increased to 63 percent compared to a 2002-09 average of 59 percent.

Literature Review

The work of Chaney (2010) reports that American institutions “teeter in the new century, across the national board, bereft top-down of integrity and character. Football, news media, education are only emblematic of the cultural cancer. Word, rhetoric, typically gets no respect by sender nor receiver, and lies ready cheap for both manipulation and interpretation in age of instant media. We talk the good game about anything. We accentuate the positive, deny the negative, exaggerating our way around challenges that confound us. The term is “truthiness.” Then consider how far society gets hyperbolic about football and sees no evil—the imperative coping mechanism for America, champion of human virtue—and rhetorical sensibilities go haywire.” Chaney reports that both the majority media and football is proclaiming a ‘culture change’ in relation to violence and it is reported that in recent weeks it has been declared by “coaches, organizer, researchers and many athletes that “tackling technique and clean play are working, driven by fresh morality enveloping the gridiron. Raising “awareness” is the rally cry and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell postures that all is well.” (Chaney, 2010)

Chaney reports that most of the mainstream sports media “haven’t left the football party. Nothing’s changed in their practice and relationship with the game institution. Business as usual reigns, not impact reform, as the misbegotten football-media complex cannot handle truth, never could.” (2010) Chaney reports of the “modern mass media” stating that this media, particularly television media “have managed a political correctness in football rhetoric and imagery, sanitizing violence in content like the Golden Press. Formerly standard terms like “head-hunter” and “smash-mouth” are considered tasteless for commentators, including print scribes, and TV networks have shelved graphics like the colliding, exploding helmets that once promoted Monday Night Football.” (Chaney, 2010) Chaney states that the press has “ritualized trivia for concussions, their benign reports on status of injured players for gaining medical clearance and returning to action. Fans certainly consume this information for anticipating games in high school, college and the NFL.” (2010)

Chaney reports as well that senior writer for ESPN, Howard Bryant has passed criticism on the “parties of football denial, athletes, organizers, fans and media—including his employer—decrying their complacency. On Oct. 27, Bryant noted, “lately, perhaps even suddenly, it is becoming clear that football is not impervious to the forces that would chip away at its position atop the nation’s hierarchy of sports industries. In fact, the sport is doomed in its current form. A new scrutiny on the speed of the game and the violence of its collisions makes it unlikely that football will exist in 10 years the way it does today. … In a nation attracted to violence, the NFL has decisions to make that will reveal its courage—or its greed.” (Chaney, 2010) Sports media must acknowledge the fact that “head contact and brain injury cannot be eliminated from football at any level in any locale.” (Chaney, 2010) Chaney states that it is necessary that sports media “end suckling dependence on football which requires their accepting establishment word at face value, and begin legitimate questioning of the entire system, not just athletes. “ I think you have to start treating sports as big business—which is what they are—and covering them the same way you cover government, covering them the same way you cover massive corporations,” said Mark Fainaru-Wada, investigative reporter and co-author of Game of Shadows, in 2006. “There’s nothing wrong with doing some real serious investigating and probing into how these bodies work, and whether what you’re seeing is real.” (2010) The work of Sage more than two decades ago made note of the fact “…most of our written and broadcast information does not confront people with questions about the larger social issues and political and economic consequences of modern sport and physical activity. Instead, we are fed a steady diet of traditional slogans, clichés, sacred cows, and ritualized trivia.”

A 2005 study of newspapers found sports sections were predominantly “a passive and reactive space” filled with repetitive theme in game previews and recaps, praise and criticism of coaches and athletes. Perhaps 10 percent of content was “enterprise” reporting, concluded the Project for Excellence in Journalism.” (Chaney, 2010) It is necessary that today’s sports media start linking “adverse events of all sorts in athletics –  violence, casualties, drugs, public waste, inequity, sex – to the overlying forces and consequences, versus treating each incident as disparate and forgettable.” (Chaney, 2010) Chaney (2010) reports on media and its relation to selling football to the public and states as follows: “In the daily news menu, amid media season of football marketing, look beyond the pounding mythology of gridiron glory stories streaming forth infinitely—heroic players, great teams, big games in cycle—and find topics of the pastime’s untenable ills. Mainstream news content is anchored by football’s audience power, for print and television, and the game’s systemic negatives still hold low profile overall. However, alarms are sounding, drawing public scrutiny that’s getting intense, particularly from authorities who count. Lawmakers, judges, juries, attorneys, and insurance officials are collectively poised to remake or break the game that seems unstoppable to fans. Much has gone wrong for football in recent decades, varied issues affecting all levels of the nationalized sport. Foremost, head injury has become football’s legal nightmare through court decisions and accumulating clinical proof that brain trauma can debilitate and kill in any activity of contact, and slowly, through lighter impacts known as “sub-concussive.” (Chaney, 2010) Chaney reports that the issue of head wounding “has exploded into critical questions of tort law for healthcare and liability, and injured players have won civil suits.” (2010) The following table labeled Figure 1 contains the timeline events relating to brain injury in sports football.

Brain Injury Timeline in Sports Football

According to Chaney (2010) what is lacking in the sport media analysis is “the acclaimed ‘sociological imagination’ in communication stated by sociologist C. Wright Mills in 1959. Mills held that social science should necessarily become ‘social studies’ to broaden collective thinking, practice new methodology and outcome, to better employ the discipline’s political power in most challenging times.” (Chaney, 2010) Chaney reports that in Mill’s work ‘The Social Imagination’  it was observed that people were seeking “a quality of mind that will help them use information and to develop reason in order to achieve lucid summations of what is going on in the world and of what may be happening within themselves.” (2010) Additionally reported is that journalists, scholars, artists and publics, as well as scientists and editors, all of whom are opinion leaders must necessarily “nurturing a new conscious, rationale and remedy.” (Chaney, 2010) Chaney states that what will be required is that each media source must formulate reports on football and coordinate a national review of injury in football so that the estimation of societal costs will be documented in terms of the “extent of epidemic”. (2010) According to Chaney, what sports media en masse cannot do is to “stand by…while the typical few investigate a panoramic problem of beloved football.” (2010)

Case Study: Julius Peppers Injury

Intense trauma that is associated with contact sports is known as Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy and this is a degenerative brain disease and this is known to affect behavior including onset of depression. Reported is that which Chicago Bears defensive end Julius Peppers “laid on Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers in the NFC championship game nearly changed the course of football history.” (Castillo, 2011) It is reported that two concussions were suffered during the season by Rodgers and a third would have put him on the bench indefinitely” however, it is reported that Rodgers “…got up, spat the blood from his lip, and led the Packers to victory over the Bears and then over the Steelers in the Super Bowl.” (Castillo, 2011) Peppers is stated to have appeared worse than Rodgers however, Rodgers said the secret was the “new impact-dampening helmet. The replay is stated as follows: “When Peppers connects, Rodgers’s chinstrap slips off his jaw and slides up his face until it covers his mouth. The helmet floats above his head for a moment, before flopping back into place. That is not how helmets are designed to work. When they are lab tested, the assumption is that they stick to the head. So did Rodgers’s helmet really having anything to do with preventing a concussion? Who knows.” (Castillo, 2011) It is noted that very little is known about brain protection as its “…floats delicately in the cerebrospinal fluid—that it isn’t even clear whether a helmet is more protective when used as directed or when worn loosely, which might dissipate some impact energy.” (Castillo, 2011)

A recent sport business report relates that the NFL has an ongoing commitment “to the health, safety and well-being of our players, they conducted an extensive search to find the new leaders of our committee.” (Sports Business,    ) The mission of the NFL HNS Committee is reported to be multifaceted and stated as follows:

• Ensure that NFL team medical staffs have access to the best technology
  and research on the prevention and treatment of head, neck and spine
• Study injury data and equipment research to assist the NFL, its teams
  and its players in providing the safest environment for minimizing
  injuries to the head, neck and spine.
• Examine the latest treatment strategies and recommend to club medical
  staffs and players the best practices regarding treatment of injuries
  to the head, neck and spine.
• Join with the NFL Alumni Association to expand on existing programs
  such as the 88 Plan and support additional research on the long-term
  impact of concussions and related injuries.
• Encourage and support research and education to increase public
  awareness about head, neck and spine injuries, their prevention and
  (Sports Business,    )

Summary and Conclusion

Chaney states that the NFL and its union will most certainly “roll on” however, this is stated to be inclusive of an increase in the expense of risk and liability while feeling the blows to feeder systems. The league in particular will come to practice an openness or disclaimer for its array of serious hazards, spelled out in legalize and endorsed by the players union, ranging from bodily injury and disease to drug abuse.” (2010)  The clear path for the present is one in which the mainstream media must proactively lead reform rather than fear the demise of football due to injuries suffered by players and specifically those in the NFL. It is indeed the media who can ensure that the appropriate focus is taken on safety in football through driving the reform of playing rules and equipment requirements in NFL football. Media has historically shied away from addressing football sports injuries however, the time has come for media to courageously step forth and lead the necessary changes ensuring the safety of players and the continuation of NFL games that Americans so love.

References

Perrin, Alisa (2011) Media Representations of Brain Injuries in Sports [May 23-27, 2011] Media Commons. Retrieved from: http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/content/media-representations-brain-injuries-sports-may-23-27-2011

Chaney, Michael (2010) Spiral of Denial. Can Sports Media Act as Free Press in Football Crisis? Chaney’s Blog. 19 Nov, 2010. Retrieved from: http://blog.4wallspublishing.com/2010/11/19/can-sport-media-act-as-free-press-in-football-crisis.aspx

Barr, James Patrick (2010) Violence in Football. Comm 412: Sports, Media & Society. 20 Oct 2010. Retrieved from: http://www.personal.psu.edu/jpb5086/blogs/Comm412/2010/10/violence-in-football.html

NFL Injuries Up in 2010, NFLPA Says (2011) Huffpost Sports.

Torg, J.S., Sennett, B. and Vegso, J.J. (1987). Spinal injury at the third and fourth cervical vertebrae resulting from the axial loading mechanism: an analysis and classification. Clinics in Sports Medicine, 6, 159-85.

J.S., Vegso, J.J. and Sennett, B. (1987). The national football head and neck injury registry: 14-year report on cervical quadriplegia. Clinics in Sports Medicine, 6, 61-72.