I unexpectedly got called yesterday evening by BBC World Service Radio because the producer of World Have Your Say wanted to do a follow up program, a year on from my being a guest on the same international radio show discussing the Olympic Legacy for Sydney 2000.
The topic to be discussed this time was: Are the International press always sceptical of the hosts before the Olympics? The guests on yesterday’s show were journalists from Barcelona, Sydney (myself), Greece and China. We were asked how we each remembered local and international media covering the Olympics in the run up to the World’s biggest sporting competition.
Points that I discussed included:
Recalling that during the run up to the Olympics our local media covered topics like : hopes for our athletes, last minute athlete selection dramas, Olympic Sponsors exclusive rights, restaurants raising prices or adding Olympics surcharge, 10% rise in taxi fares for Olympics etc.
I also mentioned that one of our best satirists John Clarke recently presented a documentary series called Sporting Nation on ABC TV, our national broadcaster. His opening line was
“Australia is a sporting nation, which means, in order to be a properly accredited member of society, with human rights and so on, you’ve got to either play sport or watch sport”.
So once the Games began and it came to actual coverage of the Olympics our media was almost solely focused on how our athletes performed and how many medals gold and otherwise, we would win.
Aussie journalist Neerav tells #WHYS: “Generally the mood was ‘How many gold medals will we win?’ – we are very sports-focussed” #Olympics
— World Have Your Say (@BBC_WHYS) July 17, 2012
Australian journalist Neerav tells #WHYS: “It’s not the media’s job to be a cheer squad, it’s our job to tell what happens.” #Olympics
— World Have Your Say (@BBC_WHYS) July 17, 2012
One thing that is very different now compared to the year 2000 is how people can communicate using social media on the Internet. It wouldn’t have been possible back then to quickly ask a large number of people to help you with research for journalism work at very short notice. Whereas now it can be done quite easily via Twitter or Facebook eg:
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