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Silencing the Olympic Spirit

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At best, NBC’s coverage of the 2008 Summer Olympics danced around the festering issues of Chinese domestic policy that were at the heart of these Games. At worst, the network’s nightly broadcasts tried to convince American viewers that those issues did not exist.

Political commentary and the Olympic Games will forever be joined in unholy union by the nature of Olympic competition. The Olympics aren’t supposed to be political, but when hundreds of countries send thousands of athletes on a two-week athletic showcase, it’s tough to ignore the political undercurrent.

Even tougher to ignore this year was the recent political conduct of China, the host country of these Games. Repressive and authoritarian both at home and abroad, China boasts a human rights record that is nothing short of deplorable.

Not surprisingly, China tried to obscure its true political identity during this year’s Summer Olympics. Starting with the opening ceremony, China strove to portray itself as a burgeoning modern empire, replete with sashaying girls and psychedelic costumes.

Somewhat more surprisingly, NBC obliged. The network’s coverage of the opening ceremony characterized China as the land of great choreography instead of as a country struggling against the current of political censorship. Segments on the Beijing nightlife and commentary on the symbolism of the opening ceremony were never appropriately balanced by reporting on the consequences of political protest for the average Tibetan nationalist.

Compounding the problem was the reticence of Olympic athletes to comment on the politics of these Games. In an interview conducted months before the Summer Olympics, LeBron James, a star on the U.S. men’s basketball team, said he considered it a responsibility to speak out in support of human rights and implied that he might take a public stand at the Games in Beijing. In the weeks before the opening ceremony, though, James changed his tone, telling reporters that the Olympics were about sport, not politics.

James wasn’t completely off base: For that brief moment in time when basketball players take the court or runners sprint around the track, the Olympics are all about the celebration of sport and athletic achievement.

But there is more to the Olympics than just sport. Not many people can recall the details of the 200 meter final at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City, but most Americans know exactly what happened on the medal stand, when Americans Tommie Smith and John Carlos, already barefoot to represent the poverty of the black community, raised their gloved fists to the sky in a show of black pride. The Olympics may be about sport, but they also afford us the opportunity to tell the truth, and to get people to listen.

And while NBC didn’t have a correspondent on the medal stand in 2008, it did have control of the airwaves. The network could have told the truth about China, that it is a modernizing and increasingly open country that still has a long way to go in the arena of human rights. Instead, NBC chose to pretend that Chinese political policy was peripheral to these Games, hoping that its audience would go along for the ride. We can only hope that manipulation does not become a permanent part of the Olympic spirit.

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