The Olympic Games create news. Not just the medal tally, not just a swimmer’s paunch or international love match, but actual moments that history should record.
Imagine a powerful, significant event at an Olympic venue in London on the scale of Jesse Owens’ protest against the Nazis at the Berlin Olympics in 1936. A media blackout would mean nobody but selected media outlets with broadcast rights could show that for three hours — and then they could only show it for a few minutes a day.
Wonder why TV news bulletins have been running still images to capture Olympic competition? It’s because the International Olympic Committee threatens a lawsuit if they play more than six minutes of footage a day.
Six minutes. From hundreds of hours of footage from dozens of different events.
The IOC says it’s to protect its broadcast rights holders, in Australia the Nine Network and Foxtel. It’s also draconian censorship that wouldn’t stand anywhere else.
The IOC decrees its role is to:
“… encourage and support the promotion of ethics in sport as well as education of youth through sport and to dedicate its efforts to ensuring that, in sport, the spirit of fair play prevails and violence is banned.”
How you do that without telling anyone about what goes on is anyone’s guess. Fair play? Not likely.
But Crikey, there’s a benefit.
It is possible to watch TV channels that show other stuff. After the media had awarded the 4X100m gold medal to Australia and the dang race failed to deliver the required outcome, I expect a lot of viewers would be keen to watch something else.
This blackout has also affected the BBC. So for anyone outside the UK who regularly listens to BBC Radio online, there is a total blackout for the duration of the Olympics.
http://iplayerhelp.external.bbc.co.uk/help/playing_radio_progs/radioonline_olympics/
Couldn’t be bothered watching the Opening Ceremony, but then I heard that Rowan Atkinson’s Mr Bean was a hit with many people. So I went to YouTube to watch it, and the first four or five postings were blocked by the Olympic Committee’s censors, but then the next dozen or so postings of Rowan in action (very funny he was, too) were easy to find and see. Hopefully, mass civil disobedience will prove an irresistible force beyond the capacity of the IOC’s staffing numbers.
As far as I’m concerned more media censorship coming from the Olympic Committee means less bread and circuses. Fine by me.
The IOC allow only six minutes of footage a day? Seems excessive to me.
I went online to watch the ER11 and James Bond video, way more entertaining than 4 hours of an expensive circus with pyrotechnics.