I'm in the camp of not giving even a tiny d*mn about the Olympics, and giving even less than that during the winter games. So I pondered skipping this thread altogether. But it really is about journalism, not sports, and journalism is an interest of mine.
"If it bleeds, it leads" is the old expression in the news business. An individual's death, however, isn't always newsworthy. That an athlete dies on the cusp of the Olympics is, arguably, news. But "because there is footage" is not reason enough to justify televising footage of someone's death. If you are going to televise somebody in the final moments of his or her life, there had better be a compelling reason -- a practical lesson society could learn from witnessing the tragedy. I think there may be a compelling case for luge participants to want to study the footage and learn from their fellow athlete's tragic mistake (or to determine if, in fact, a mistake had been made), so I suppose one could justify the footage being shown on any news program that would normally cover the event, provided they did so in that context. But that would rule out all of the network newscasts, as well as CNN, MSNBC, and FoxNews, none of which have sports divisions. One could make an exception that whichever network has broadcast rights to the games (in this instance NBC) tends to include Olympic coverage in their newscast, but that is more in terms of a cross-promotional thing than actually treating the event as news. I haven't seen the footage, nor do I have any interest in it. But if NBC televised the footage with the understanding they were doing so in the interest of fellow luge participants learning what had happened, I could see a reason for showing it. Otherwise, for anyone else or under any other circumstances, it is an unnecessary visual, and I'd have to agree with David that it should not have been televised on a news broadcast. -- Kevin M. (RPCV) -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
