A few months ago, the kids and I were at the local pool. Just about 20 minutes after we arrived, I was watching J. go down the slide when I saw one of the lifeguards acting a bit strange.
The young high school girl paced back and forth on the side of the pool, her eyes trained on something in the deep end. My internal momma-alarm started going full blare as I realize, something's going down. About 30 seconds later she blew her whistle and shouted for everyone to get out of the pool. With J at that end of the pool, I started to make my way over. Suddenly two life guards jumped in the water while others whistled repeatedly and pulled everyone out of the two pools in the facility.
We waited shivering in the hallway for about 10 minutes as they pulled a young man out of the pool and put him on a back board. About five minutes later, they told us they were going to close the pool so the kids and I got dressed and headed to the car. I gave them the grave lecture about the importance of safety at the pool, swimming with a buddy, being careful, paying attention to your body and resting when you're tired, only diving in water you know is deep enough, etc., etc. That's when we saw the news vans. The local channel even taped us driving away from the pool.
Later that night, I watched the 11 pm local news and there it was, my van pulling out of the parking lot of the swimming pool as background footage for the story of a "near drowning" at the pool. The interesting thing was they reported that the child pulled from the pool was a two-year old! I (along with many others waiting by the pool) saw the lifeguards pull a kid out of the water who was taller than me! No way could he be anything close to a two-year old and what parent would have a two-year old in the deep end of the pool? This facility has a perfectly good wading/kiddie pool.
Bottom line - the news got this detail completely wrong. (But they did report that he was fine and eventually sent home from the hospital.)
As a news-junkie, this was particularly troubling to me and I remember thinking, "How many other times have they been wrong?" Sure, we give the media a little wiggle room when it's disasters of mass proportions. Remember how death totals went up and down from September 11th? The Tsunami? Katrina? In the midst of chaos and mass casualty, we can expect a few hair triggers to put out some erroneous information, but this was a pretty controlled situation. There were over 100 witnesses who could have told a reporter the kid was a 15-17 year old so how could they get this basic piece of information so wrong?
Today a good blogging soul with a heart for truth and justice pointed me to this piece. I want you to read it. Today. It takes about 15 minutes, but it just might save you or someone you love a lifetime of hardship, pain and grief. If you think this isn't an important issue that you need to KNOW the truth about? Ask this blogger, "Why should I care?"
This piece challenges the way we've been trained to trust media coverage to a point that puts us at risk. It uses facts, statistics and historical precedence to do it. If the "news" can make simple mistakes about the age of a kid, what else are they wrong about or even not telling us? I'm not one to wave banners for many causes, but getting the UN-BIASED FACTS and RELIABLE, HONEST information is a cause I'll get behind any day.
