|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
The Games have begun – how will they end?
Home /
The Big Issue /
August 11, 2008
- Posted by
 Whether China’s officialdom likes it or not, the story of the Olympics is human rights – and journalists want a full set of reporting tools at their disposal. A dust-up over Internet access is only one small piece of the complex and demanding task of getting the full story while at the same time making gains for press freedom globally.What progress – if any – have journalists made in the Olympic arena? Here’s a look back at some of J-Source’s coverage in 2008: Journalists have their own Olympic countdown Finding balance in a land of limited access China’s broken promise IOC accepts Chinese censorship Reporters' guide for Beijing Olympics To keep up on press freedom’s medal count during the Games, visit the Foreign Correspondents Club of China site. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
hi Maurice:
Thank you so much for your comments.. you are so on the button with all you said..
your comments of people living in illusion and ducking the truth is all over the world. and it is getting more dangerous by the moment..
The world politics being played out e.g. why is Georgia and the tragedy of those people .. women, children, men killed by Russian soldiers in an apartment building - defenseless people.. why is there no outrage in this country....- how can the Olympics (and we now know what that means and you well explained it) - take the place of an aggressive communist country like Russia walking into a small country (which was pre planned by the way) - and shooting up the town! -
Indeed for those who dont want to be part of the 'great lie' - now is the time.
By colluding with China respective of censorship, the IOC has further tarnished its wobbly reputation.
As a result, the public will place less value on Olympic gold medal endorsements.
Regarding "human rights," if the IOC, Olympic sponsors, and athletes keep looking the other way the public will lose even more faith, which means the IOC, already teetering on a precipitous edge, could take many years or even decades to win back public trust.
The public is finally starting to understand the Olympic-profit dynamic, and to also realize that the Games are no longer sports centric.
China drove the ball to the green, and as soon as 2008 is over the focus will shift to Vancouver 2010 where we will sink the long putt.
It is estimated that Vancouver now has 3,000 homeless people living on the streets, many as a result of 2010 gentrification.
It is way too late for BC Premier Gordon Campbell to state in Beijing (08/12/08) that he is going to do something about the homeless in Vancouver.
Where was he last year, and the year before that, and before that? Instead of taking the initiative early to make substantial changes, he chose to look the other way, and so too did local mainstream news media, the IOC and their Olympic sponsors like Visa, Coca-Cola, and RBC.
Olympic players everywhere hoped everyone would continue to look the other way.
Instead, a growing number of us chose to stare them down.
I am pro-Olympics - with a twist.
I love the sport, but hate the politics.
The 2010 Olympics made it impossible for an average family to live in Vancouver, and we are still eighteen months away from the big event. House prices are finally starting to spiral down, but unfortunately, and as expected, taxes are still rising rapidly with no end in sight.
During Olympic frenzy, developers and real estate companies, who buy millions in ad space from local mainstream news media, newspapers especially, made a fortune off the back of our community. Newspapers cultivated an oligopic relationship with Olympic organizations, and also with land developers who carted wheelbarrows of gold to the vaults of another Olympic sponsor, RBC. Since 2003, and even very recently, local news media misleadingly reported that house prices would only keep going up, which encouraged a trusting public to invest in 40 year mortgages with zero down.
I invested three years in full time research between 2003 and 2006, and wrote a book that addresses the impact Olympic events have on Host regions, specifically Vancouver. My book, Leverage Olympic Momentum, which teaches people how to beat the Olympics at their own game, was published in 2006 and distributed to every mayor and civic leader that had a connection to the 2010 Olympics. Not one mayor acknowledged receiving the book, thankfully though their offices had to sign for it and we have the receipts, which means they cannot claim they didn't know the 2010 nightmare wouldn't play out the way it has. They purposefully chose to look the other way.
Many predictions documented in my book have come to fruition, and there are more yet to play out. The most interesting was that The Vancouver Sun would become the region's Olympic newspaper and paid booster, which they did officially in 2008. We also predicted the BC Place dome would become a 2010 embarrassment, and one year after the book was published the roof blew out. The only major call we missed was thinking that Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan would be a stand-up guy and protect our community. He was one of the first mayors to receive a book, but he ignored us too.
In 2004 I also gave local mainstream news media a number of opportunities to tell both sides of the Olympic story, and to report in a timely and nonpartisan manner the real challenges Vancouver faces regarding the Olympics.
Unfortunately, only a small handful of news organizations half-heartedly pursued what we were reporting about 2010 impact. Granted, now they are all all over it, but when the community really needed them they were too busy negotiating deals with Olympic organizations. As Noam Chomsky described, it was a brilliant execution of "necessary illusion" and "manufactured consent."
CanWest Global, an official and well paid Olympic booster interviewed me three times, but failed to publish even one of the interviews, while publishers like Wired, BC Business Magazine, Business Edge, CityTV, and a number of radio stations across Canada gave me an opportunity to share my findings regarding the Olympics and social media. Even another Olympic partner/supplier, The Globe and Mail, gave me space last year.
A couple of weeks ago, early August/08, Jeff Lee, a senior reporter with The Vancouver Sun, published a book review about a local anti-Olympic activist who promotes civil disobedience, which, in Olympic regions historically and almost always turns into violent protest. Lee misleadingly states that the activist, who waves a skull and crossbones flag on a six-foot pole at public Olympic events, wrote the "first" critical book of the 2010 Olympics. His book was published last month, while mine was on shelves in Duthies and Chapters in the spring of 2006. Why would Lee pan my book? It's only speculation, but it might have something to do with my blunt critique of his Olympic reporting in my book and companion blog, or that the other guy promotes violent Olympic protest, which as we know, sells headlines and newspapers.
I promote a solution that is neither dramatic, nor violent. In maintain that traditional street protest, which usually turns violent, is not only ineffective in Olympic regions (the IOC has vast experience managing Olympic protest and they know exactly how to suppress it), but that it also costs taxpayers dearly and has a negative impact on the reputation of the Host region. It's too late to protest after you win the Bid.
In the interest of full disclosure, there is one other reason why Lee could be panning me, and it's a big one ... my solution has a direct negative impact on local news media profit.
People form an opinion of the Olympics predominantly through what they experience via mainstream news media.
If the public can't trust news media to tell both sides of the story, and do so in a TIMELY manner, whom can they trust?
The IOC arrogantly promotes the, "You are with us, or against us" mantra. It's the same strategy U.S. President George W. Bush and mainstream news media used in 2001 to trick us into a war that would also generate dramatic headlines and sell more newspapers. Thanks.
It's time for an ethical Olympics, and it's time for local news media to put the community before their profits.
Maurice Cardinal
Editor: www.OlyBLOG.com
Author: www.LeverageOlympicMomentum.com
"We don't break the news. We fix it."