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Sun. Feb 17, 2008

Olympic Blogging Redux

They might be one of the slowest organizations to change with the times, but somehow, after the fiasco of four years ago, the International Olympic Committee is beginning to get a clue:

The International Olympic Committee is for the first time permitting athletes to write blogs.

The IOC has set out guidelines for blogging at the Beijing Games to ensure copyright agreements are not infringed.

They include bans on posting any audio or visual material of action from the games themselves.

“It is required that, when accredited persons at the games post any Olympic content, it be confined solely to their own personal Olympic-related experience,” said an IOC statement.

“The IOC considers blogging … as a legitimate form of personal expression and not a form of journalism,” the Olympic authority said.

“Blogs should be dignified and in good taste.”

BBC: Beijing athletes allowed to blog

Yes, and beer should be dark, cold, and plentiful. But often it is light, room temperature, or like right now, not available in my refrigerator. One would hope that athletes would create blogs that are “dignified and in good taste,” but an Olympic decree won’t make that happen, any more than it will put beer in my fridge on a Sunday in Georgia.

They should have learned four years ago, when, by Olympic decree, they tried to ban blogging altogether:

The International Olympic Committee is barring competitors, as well as coaches, support personnel and other officials, from writing firsthand accounts for news and other websites.

An exception is if an athlete has a personal website that was not set up specifically for the Games.

The IOC’s rationale for the restrictions is that athletes and their coaches should not serve as journalists — and that the interests of broadcast rightsholders and accredited media come first.

You’re Athletes, Not Journalists

As I wrote back then…

First, it’s notable that the IOC believes not only that “athletes and their coaches should not serve as journalists,” but also that the simple act of blogging would breach that barrier. Ergo, bloggers are journalists. It’s an Olympic decree.

If these athletes blogged, they wouldn’t be getting attention because they were engaging in journalism, they’d be getting attention because they were athletes, doing something that millions of individuals do … publish their thoughts on the web. To say that publishing on the web makes an Olympic athlete a “journalist” is as absurd as saying that putting an experienced sportswriter on the Olympic track makes them a sprinter. It is skill, training, and experience that makes a journalist, or a sprinter … not the medium.

The Daily Whim: Thou Shalt Not Blog

Writing in a blog does not make you a political pundit. It does not make you a journalist. It does not make you an athlete. In fact, it does not make you anything you weren’t before you posted in a blog, with the exception of your personal thoughts are more widely known, even if only by a little.

And it’s really not something that any large body can control. These Olympics, the first to involve “location politics” since the 1980 (Moscow) and 1984 (LA) Games, will emphasize that. There’s an article coming out in the March edition of The Atlantic entitled “The Connection Has Been Reset” (it may eventually be at this URL, but not yet) that explains how China appears to be preparing to create an entirely separate network for visitors and athletes, based on the IPs of their accommodations and local Internet Cafes. They apparently will see and access an Internet much freer of restrictions than the one your average Chinese citizen normally accesses.

How well this works remains to be seen. But you can be sure there will be those, both athletes and others, who will try to test whatever restrictions the IOC or the Chinese government tries to put in place.

It’s a shame that the focus of this year’s Olympics will not be on the athletes. But this is the reality, and we’ll hear talk about all kinds of things leading up to August, before we get around to the real reason people are gathering.