Saturday 28 July 2012

I suspect there will be

little reading of this blog, or any other blog, today. There may be a very few people looking at something other than the Olympic Opening Ceremony right now. Yes, I am one. We cannot view it in this house. No doubt we will see some heavily edited highlights on the evening news service.
I am not, as regular readers know, keen on sport. I know it would be nice if the Aussie athletes won some medals (and that they probably will) but it will not be the end of the world if they do not. 
I have been more concerned about the curiously negative reporting by many of our journalists in the lead up to the Olympics. I wonder if it will change now? Will they concentrate on the performance of the athletes or go on using the Olympics to, as one journalist put it to me, "take the opportunity to bash the Brits"? He seemed to think it was a marvellous opportunity to do just that. That sort of attitude is not, as they say, "cricket".  I do not remember their journalists doing it to Australia when the Olympics were held in Sydney. It is against the "Olympic spirit" too.
If Australia has a "good Olympics" (i.e. medals, preferably gold) then I imagine that little more negativity will prevail. If they do not then I imagine that the accommodation, the transport, the disruptions and anything else journalists can find, will be commented on instead. The weather (about which nothing can be done) will be used as an excuse - air quality is already being targetted.
I know that the Olympics are fought more like a war than played like a friendly sport but it all seems rather - well "unsporting" to me.

1 comment:

widdershins said...

When the winter Olympics were here two years ago ... Unfortunately I think it's the nature of the modern day beast.