Beijing making sure politics stay out of summer games
Published 2:18 pm Saturday, August 2, 2008
BEIJING — The Olympic handbook is 150-plus pages and discusses everything Olympic.
Although the topic is buried somewhere in the middle, I think the Olympic News Service got to the part about political expression in world-record time for the Beijing Olympics.
One aspect has dominated the discussion among the members of the Olympics’ official wire service — what can and can’t be asked, or said, inside the venues.
Attempts to avoid controversy aren’t new for the Beijing go-round. Even the Greeks called for a truce for the ancient Olympics starting with the first Olympic Games in 776 B.C. The modern charter was first adopted in 1908 and last modified in 2007. With varying degrees of success, Olympic coordinators have strived to keep the Games apolitical.
Rule 51.3 of the Olympic Charter states that, “no kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites.”
What many don’t realize, though, was that the latest interpretation of rule 51.3 by the International Olympic Committee prohibits anyone associated with Olympics — including credentialed foreign journalists — to ask controversial questions, especially during the most formal press conferences.
In a meticulous competition rehearsal on July 24 at China Agricultural Gymnasium, the site for Olympic wrestling, officials staged a mock event with China’s national wrestling team, from opening round bouts to the medal matches, sans cameras and spectators.
During one of the mock bronze-medal matches (Olympic competition awards two bronze in each weight class), about 50 crowd service volunteers stood up and simultaneously chucked empty water bottles toward the mat to monitor how the officials, wrestlers and especially security, handled the impediment.
Onlookers who hadn’t been informed of the plan to disrupt the proceedings looked as if Rulon Gardner had stolen another gold medal from the Russians. On an unrelated note, Gardner is slated to be an analyst for NBC’s Olympic wrestling coverage.
The officials, security and everybody else handled the situation, and they moved on to the gold-medal match and the award ceremony without incident.
Immediately after competition is when a few journalists have a crack at getting some quotes — so after an early afternoon meeting with Olympic News Service managers, we had our instructions: ask coherent and intelligent questions, without inquiring about anything that might be considered controversial.
For my three Iowa comrades and I, this news was a bit disheartening. The notion also bugged Ray, a Chinese student from Beijing Sports University, who was irritated at the notion that doping questions were off limits. I had to chuckle a bit at Ray’s disdain, because any inquiry less than three minutes after competition about his or her doping would be incredibly insulting.
The first point of access for journalists is called the mixed zone. It’s an informal setting where athletes must walk past a throng of reporters and are in no way obligated to stop to chat. If they choose to talk about their performance, the Olympic News Service records the comments, no matter who asks the question. The idea is to provide a database of quotes and results for other journalists—who may be covering several sports each day — to use in their stories.
The mixed zone is rather informal, so it’s likely the only place inside an Olympic venue a reporter will be able to sneak a contentious issue into an interview, which figures to go no more than two minutes for the winners who have limited time to prepare for their next opponent.
We found a little solace in knowing that our reports for the ONS could include potentially controversial comments, despite our inability to ask certain questions.
So the mock Olympic event moved on to the mock press conference, which will conclude each day’s competition with a final chance to interact with the athletes.
Not surprisingly, it’s a tightly controlled environment. Each journalist is limited to a single question. The inquiries are filtered through a moderator, who will decide whether the question is appropriate.
During the staged press conference, an athlete began by holding up a “Free Tibet” sign. A mock journalist stood immediately, and holding a newspaper shouted something in Chinese, and then was promptly escorted out of the room.
The ordeal was hysterical. The mood was light and I was pleased to find the Chinese found these staged political demonstrations as humorous as the Americans did, all the while realizing in a week with cameras clicking and the recorders running, there won’t be anything funny about it.
Nathan Cooper is in Beijing to cover the Games of the XXIX Olympiad. He is a part-time Tribune employee and a 2005 graduate of Glenville-Emmons High School.