A top European broadcast official says television coverage roadblocks in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics are a worrying sign for reporting freedom during the games.
Seven weeks before the Olympics open, television broadcasters are involved in a fight with Chinese organizers over coverage away from the sports venues. This involves moving satellite trucks around the city, deploying equipment and clear rules about where TV cameras will be able to film.
China’s communist government seems to fear that roving TV cameras and 30,000 journalists might show protests by political, ethnic or religious dissidents, or athletes and activists speaking out against China’s policies in Tibet or Darfur.
“What’s going on now might be an indication of what could happen during the games,” Fernando Pardo, head of sports for the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), said in a telephone interview on Friday. “If this happens during the Games, the reaction of broadcasters could be unpredictable.”
The president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Jacques Rogge, said on Thursday that Beijing organizers were close to resolving the issues.
“It will take a couple of days to finalize everything,” Rogge said in an interview. “Things are moving extremely well to resolve these issues.”
Pardo, who has covered every Olympics since the 1976 Montreal Games, said he has seen only limited progress since emergency meetings on May 29 and May 30 in Beijing with top IOC, TV and Beijing organizing officials.
“I would love to agree with Mr Rogge, but unfortunately I don’t see many signs to agree,” said Pardo, who said he was expressing the feelings of other TV executives involved in the Games. “There are dark clouds on the horizon that keep me from agreeing.”
“We saw big security problems in Moscow [1980], so this is not new for me,” Pardo said. “We have worked in communist regimes before. But here it is much more difficult than Moscow. We have been in very difficult situations on other occasions. Not everything has been rosy, but nothing like this occasion. We have only seven weeks before the Games and so many things are not settled.”
Pardo said next week was critical as broadcasters begin moving operations to Beijing. He said broadcasters could seek financial compensation from the local organizing committee if promises were not met.
“If by any chance, when we are there in the Olympics working and we cannot work freely and get services we need, this is the moment when we can ask for compensation,” Pardo said.
Beijing Olympic organizing officials could not be reached for comment, but have repeatedly promised reporters would be free to do their jobs and cover the Olympics as they have at previous Games.
“We will fulfill our commitment to offer an efficient and high standard of service to all media and learn from the successful experience of the 2004 Athens Olympic Games organizers,” organizing committee chairman Liu Qi was quoted as saying yesterday.
Liu, who is also Communist Party chief of Beijing, the capital’s most powerful politician, said organizers would follow a “zero refusal” policy for interview requests. However, he defined that as meaning only that “all requests for interviews would be replied to.”
The EBU is one of the major rights-holding broadcasters and will employ a staff of 4,500 during the Games. The union has 85 member broadcasters in TV and radio and covers Europe, North Africa and some countries formerly part of the Soviet Union.
RSS