December 30, 2009

Embedded at the Olympics

Media's sponsorship of 2010 compromises coverage, begs alternatives

by Tim McSorley

The Dominion - http://www.dominionpaper.ca

MONTREAL—The announcement came nearly five years to the day before the 2010 Olympics: CTV and Rogers had won the bid to be the official Olympic broadcasters in Canada for both the 2010 and 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The broadcasting deal offered up a Canadian record of $153 million for the rights, including $90 million alone for the exclusive broadcast rights for the 2010 Vancouver games. That was an increase of 221 per cent on what CBC paid to broadcast the 2006 Turin Winter Olympics and marks the first time the bid for the Winter Olympics bested the bid for the Summer Games.

Four years later, in Spring 2009, CTV/Rogers would be joined by La Presse, Canwest Global regional newspapers and The Globe and Mail as the official Francophone, regional and national media partners, respectively, of the Olympic Games.

Together, these five media outlets, which cover the vast majority of the Canadian media landscape, have a vested interest in how the Olympics are perceived, and how many people tune in or read.

“It sort of undermines any kind of journalistic independence or any claim to journalistic independence,” Mike Gasher, chair of the journalism department at Concordia University in Montreal, told The Dominion. “It's like when Quebecor [which owns Star Academie] covers Star Academie: you know there's a sort of official endorsement and I think that 'officialness' makes a big difference.”

Gasher emphasized it's unlikely that coverage is dictated by a direct order; in most news organizations, sports and news coverage will remain independent. But he warns that there could still be unconscious implications for coverage: “Most journalists would say, 'No, no, no, that's not gonna affect me,' and it probably wouldn't on any sort of conscious level, but I think on a more unconscious level, clearly you know that your newspaper is implicated in this event in some way, and it's probably going to show up [in coverage].”

Interview requests to the CTV/Rogers consortium and The Globe and Mail went unanswered. In a press release announcing their partnership with the 2010 Olympic Games, though, Globe publisher Philip Crawley stated, “As always, The Globe and Mail will do its utmost to deliver insightful, balanced and in-depth news through the stories that matter most to Canadians coast-to-coast."

Chris Shaw, author of Five Ring Circus and member of the Olympic Resistance Network, is no fan of the Olympic Games. While he admits this taints how he interprets Olympics coverage, he believes that very few in the mainstream media are making an effort to cover the Olympics in a serious way.

“It's really been kind of a 90 per cent to 10 per cent split. The 90 per cent being really bad, non-critical coverage, and the 10 per cent being some fairly decent coverage.”

For Shaw, that 90 per cent doesn't lie simply with official sponsors, but extends to other mainstream TV and news outlets, including English CBC, which was runner-up in the bid for the Olympic broadcast rights. “By and large CBC's opinion has been see no evil, hear no evil,” he says. “Other stations like Global are far more likely to be critical, but they aren't anti-Olympics by any measure.”

Charlie Smith, of Vancouver's alt-weekly Georgia Straight, sees things as a little less black and white. He argues media has done their job uncovering stories such as cost overruns, city deficits, and legislation that could further criminalize homelessness, but has failed to provide adequate context.

“I think that certain things have been introduced because of the Olympics, but have not been linked to Olympics,” Smith told The Dominion.

Smith points to the expansion of the Vancouver Police Department as one example. “It's gobbling a larger and larger share of the budget and leaving less to be distributed elsewhere. The expansion began about 5 years ago [in 2004, the year after Vancouver was granted the Games]."

“That might be one place where the mainstream media has not done a thorough job of contextualizing.”

But oft-lacking analysis in the mainstream media doesn't mean that there will be no critical media coverage of the 2010 Olympics.

Shaw believes that international journalists coming to Vancouver to cover the games won't hesitate to report on protests or on the immense poverty and homelessness among the residents of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. When the International Herald Tribune or the London Daily Times begin to run stories on these issues, he says, Canadian media will have no choice but to follow, or risk embarrassment.

There are also independent journalists coming to Vancouver with the express goal of ensuring coverage of the social impacts of the games.

“We are less interested in covering Olympics themselves than the effects, and covering what is happening in the streets. Paid media will be interested in the sports and games, while we'll be trying to fill the void on covering social issues,” says Franklin Lopez, who is helping to organize independent media coverage of the Games.

Online and new media, such as video, photo and audio posts to various sites including the Vancouver Media Coop, will play a critical role in such a project.

But while there will be alternative media coverage, the resources at the mainstream press' disposal and the sheer amount of coverage they will provide—CTV will be airing 22 hours of Olympics coverage per day on its national affiliates—mean they will certainly capture the bulk of the audience.

And as long as media outlets continue to fly the Olympic flag, people will be right to raise questions.

“If the whole point of journalism is to give sort of objective, independent, non-partisan account of events, then it really casts doubt because the media are partisans, officially,” says Gasher. “It's the same issue as embedded journalists with the military. It does raise questions about what kind of compromises are in play, whether they're conscious or unconscious.”

Tim McSorley is the Media Analysis Editor at The Dominion.

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