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Globe and Mail guest columnist argues CBC has “corrupted itself”—by agreeing to IOC geoblocking restrictions?
The Olympics usually tend to bring out some unusual viewpoints, and one of those was expressed in The Globe and Mail Tuesday. The paper ran a guest column from Blayne Haggart arguing that the CBC, Canada's official Olympic broadcaster this time around, has sacrificed its journalistic integrity in the name of the Games. Haggart, an assistant professor of political science at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, then goes on to argue that the Olympics are a "corrupting exercise" because they've been held in countries with oppressive regimes, that "we don’t need the Olympics to celebrate sports," and that at the Games, "every athletic triumph is inextricably linked to the suffering of the powerless," problematic arguments all around. It's his argument as to why the CBC's corrupt that's the most hilarious and ludicrous, though. What's their crime? They agreed to IOC regulations that prevent CBC radio coverage from being heard outside Canada during the Olympics:
The CBC has effectively turned over decisions about how its news and entire Radio 1 network will be distributed to the International Olympic Committee, which controls the rights to the Olympics.
This move casts a shadow over all of the CBC’s Olympics reporting. If they’re willing to allow the IOC such control, how do we know they’re not also toning down reports of dog slaughters, worker deaths (over 60 to date, according to the Building and Wood Worker’s International union) and human-rights violations to keep people focused on the aforementioned luge competition. Even worse, it suggests that there’s little the CBC won’t do for the right payday.
If any other group on the planet had tried this trick, the CBC’s bright lights would’ve (rightly) huffed about “journalistic integrity” and “the importance of independent media.” Canadians’ trust in the CBC’s journalism is possibly its most valuable asset, particularly since they’ve just lost their Hockey Night in Canada cash cow.
Instead, they’ve cashed it in because, Olympics.
It's a good thing Haggart is a political science professor and not a journalism one (although his Brock biography describes him as "an economist and journalist in his past lives"), because he shows remarkably little understanding of the divide between distribution/business decisions and content decisions. Geoblocking, or restricting content based on a listener's location, certainly has its problems, but it's awfully hard to argue that agreeing to only broadcast content in your country as part of an Olympic broadcasting contract (presumably to protect the value of rights in other countries) affects your organization's journalistic integrity. That's a business decision, pure and simple, and the CBC (and presumably other media organizations in other countries) had to agree to it in order to get Olympic rights. Moreover, what exactly is CBC sacrificing on the journalistic front by only broadcasting certain content in Canada? There's no reason that should affect their journalistic coverage, and no evidence that it has.
Haggart's claim that the geoblocking decision "casts a shadow over all of the CBC's Olympics reporting" is a slippery-slope argument, and one without much to support it. Sure, rightsholders have been accused of succumbing to pressure and taking a more positive slant in some sports broadcasting discussions, but there's nothing to suggest the CBC is doing that in Sochi. In fact, Yahoo's Chris Zelkovich wrote earlier this week that the CBC has been more objective and less of a pro-Canada cheerleader than the CTV-led consortium was at the last two Olympics:
"While the consortium did a commendable job in Vancouver, it was breaking in an awful lot of announcers and analysts who had never done this kind of thing before. At times, mostly in the first week, it showed. And there was an awful lot of cheerleading going on in the broadcast booth the first few days. There was even some hugging of athletes.
That's where CBC has an advantage. The on-air faces are familiar to Olympics fans and are trusted and battle-tested. Hearing the likes of Steve Armitage, Scott Oake, Catriona Le May Doan and Kurt Browning just seems right. There are a few rookies, some of whom have shown their inexperience, but there aren't many.
Cheerleading never enters the picture. Anyone caught hugging an athlete would be shot at dawn personally by Peter Mansbridge.
CBC has pretty much told the stories as they present themselves, avoiding the hype. The cameras stay on the competition instead of looking for sideshows."
Haggart's accusations of the CBC toning down reports of dog slaughters, worker deaths and human-rights violations also don't have a lot to support them. In fact, the CBC has posted numerous stories on both the dog slaughters and the human-rights violations (they may have covered the worker deaths as well, but it wasn't easy to find an example of that), and they've hardly been cheerleaders for Russia, running analysis pieces about Vladimir Putin's dubious goals and a full documentary examining the corruption, bribery and behind the scenes problems in Sochi. It's hard to say that represents kowtowing to Russia and the IOC.
The rest of the article's problematic, too. Haggart violates Godwin's Law by saying the Olympics are inexorably corrupt thanks to Nazi Germany once hosting them, and while he has a point that they've been used to prop up dubious regimes, that's not exactly something that's been ignored or covered up by the world's media. Most of today's Olympics coverage is a long way from propaganda about the greatness of the host country, and that's been very evident in Sochi, with some even arguing that the international media have been too critical of Russia. Haggart's assertion that "It’s sports, not the Olympics, that brings people together" is also patently false; if any sporting event would do, broadcasts of winter sports World Cup events would draw Olympic-sized audiences, but they don't.
The Olympics are far from perfect, especially when they're hosted in Russia, but they're an important event, and they represent the highest level of competition in many of the world's sports. Broadcasting them (and agreeing to geoblocking restrictions to do so) isn't a violation of journalistic integrity, and watching them doesn't make you a participant in "the suffering of the powerless." Haggart can refuse to watch "these exercises in corruption" all he likes, but he's going to be in a very small minority there.
