On The Media is produced by:
It’s an age old competition at the Olympics, between those who think the games should include a little context and those that think they should be solely a showcase for sport. The Washington Post's Paul Farhi’s been watching the Beijing games as a fan, but he argues that in Beijing there’s no excuse for the lack of context in the coverage.
First of all I'm watching only the Volleyball games and that's to tape them for a friend. But I think NBC has done a crappier job than they did last time and, in fact, every time they do the Olympics they do it worse than the time before. It's pure crap, nationalistic and piecemeal, very few venues are shown in full unless the USA is participating. It's also just a vehicle for corporate stardom. The corporations that have the only "rights" to participate make big bucks and outshine even the athletes in most cases. Boo, NBC and the Olympics which are nothing what the ancient Greeks intended them to be. Oh Bob Costas should have retired decades ago. I think the man is a loser. Thanks for mentioning him.
I am a teacher who tries to make students aware of the excesses and failings of the media and advertisers. Your interview with a guy who thought the NBC coverage of the Olympics was faulty for not critiquing the Chinese government for having a system that differs from us and does things we find offensive, and wasting too much time on athletics was a glaring waste of media time. Too much time on athletics? Hello! It is the OLYMPICS! duh! How dumb does he think we are?! In my view, NBC wasted too much time on the wall, which is really, like, old! To think that the American public needs Bob Costas to do a seminar on political correctness and moral politics is so patently absurd, I can't believe you wasted the time on it. Now I've used the word waste more than once. Message sent.
Listening to this segment, I kept on waiting to hear two letters--GE. Is it too conspiratorial to assume that NBC didn't want to bring up negative stories about China not only not to intrude on sports coverage, but also because NBC's owners have a significant amount of investments in China?
Please keep your comments relevant to this entry. Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments. All comments on On the Media are moderated. On the Media reserves the right to edit any comments posted on this site. Please read the onthemedia.org Comment Guidelines before posting.
Back to Episode
