Did NBC Alter the Olympics' Opening Ceremony? 499
techmuse writes "Viewing the 2008 Olympics opening ceremony online at NBC's Olympics website, you can see that the order in which the countries were presented was very different from the actual order of the countries in the ceremony, as listed at Wikipedia. NBC skipped roughly 100 countries ahead, then jumped back and forth, apparently delaying the appearance of the United States in its home market until later in the broadcast. (In fact, the US team was shown on the infield before they were shown marching!) NBC did not acknowledge this in its broadcast. Is NBC altering the reality of the broadcast to boost ratings? Was this true only online, or also in the live broadcast?"
This just in... (Score:5, Insightful)
Movie at 11.
kids today... (Score:2, Insightful)
Excuse me, are you serious? It's television , FFS! They edit, it's normal. Been going on since at least the 1950s.
A simple solution (Score:1, Insightful)
Don't watch the Olympics, on NBC or any other outlet.
Not news. (Score:4, Insightful)
This has been a tradition in Olympic broadcasts for years. It's called editing.
Re:kids today... (Score:2, Insightful)
this is how american stories go:
1.something shocking to the public happens
2.half the people complain but do nothing, and the other half laugh at the other half because they knew this was going on for a while and didn't do anything and still won't do anything
3.people forget about the shocking story until they are reminded again of it
Re:NBC alters the Olympics... (Score:1, Insightful)
Nationalistic propaganda is well within the spirit of the Olympics. So I guess I'm cool with it.
Re:dilemma (Score:3, Insightful)
> Now I don't know whether to boycott the Olympic Games because of Germany mistreating the Jews, or because it was converted to a festival of commerce. If it goes on like this, I may be soon able to boycott each day of Olympics for a different reason.
Fixed that for you, or at least set the wayback machine to the 1930's. Not to 'Godwin's Law' myself here, but the problem of countries hosting the games to boost their prestige and defuse civil rights abuse is an old one. And the problem of commercialization, given the disasters of the Australia games, isn't exactly new, either.
What is more outrageous... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:not a real issue (Score:5, Insightful)
I did, in fact, watch the entire broadcast. The countries were not broadcast in that order. You can find the order in which they actually marched in the wikipedia page. The issue here is that NBC appears to have altered the order of the events themselves. This is different from editing out bits to fit in commercials. The *story* has changed. Example:
1) You get out of your car and walk into a store.
2) You pull up to the store in your car
3) You leave your house and get into your car
4) You drive to the store
5) You leave the store with your purchase.
The correct order is 3,4,2,1,5, but the story told about what you did gives the impression that something very different happened.
NBC Censors Olympics to Americans (Score:5, Insightful)
NBC has done an excellent job of insuring that Americans cannot watch the Olympics, the Opening Ceremony and other aspects of what is going on in China. They are the first to bitch and moan about China censorship and just look at what they're doing now! Typical media.
They don't have cable out here so watching anything on the Internet from NBC is just not possible. They have effectively censored millions of Americans from watching the Olympics.
What they do have has been cut up and altered to make room for all that advertising. And, just how many times do I have to hear "Ra Deem Team" from NBC. If I hear it again, I'm going to puke!
Now, there are plenty of NON-AMERICAN web sites with the streams and videos! China has some, Germany has one, and there are others. You get the point... AVOID NBC and you can watch for free!
Re:kids today... (Score:5, Insightful)
Excuse me, are you serious? It's television , FFS! They edit, it's normal. Been going on since at least the 1950s.
This isn't the Dukes of Hazard or even Survivor. This is the Olympics. It's presented as news of the world's supposed ultimate sporting event.
Of course, the cynical among us will note that the psudo-intellectual wrappings of competition and the human condition are just dressing to sell the product. We know this really isn't news but entertainment and that the competition comes a distant third to politics and money. We can all sit around and posture about how we expect this kind of thing. But you don't get an award for being jaded.
Re:not a real issue (Score:3, Insightful)
I would have assumed that since French is the official language of the modern olympic games, they would have used that for the alphabetical ordering of the countries...
Re:Broadcast version not altered (Score:3, Insightful)
The "live broadcast" was not live.
Re:kids today... (Score:4, Insightful)
And thus, it's still entertainment.
Re:OMGWTF!?!?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh really? And for just how many movies do they alter the timeline of events? Maybe the cable companies have the ability to edit for time, but I doubt they get to rearrange the movie because it alters the story. Imagine if we could just alter the timeline of history so that whenever there is a dispute, an international incident, a war, it was shown to be the other guy who started it? Altering the sequence of events is changing the truth.
P.S. Hans shot first.
Re:kids today... (Score:3, Insightful)
That's the problem:
(1) Country A attacks Country B
(2) Country B launches a retaliatory strike against country A
(3) Country C forms an alliance with country A
(4) Countries D, E and F send supples to country B.
Of course, the order of events in the news is only trivial.
Sequence (1,2,3,4) is no different from sequence (4,1,2,3)
Re:olypics video tech (Score:1, Insightful)
I looked yesterday for where I could watch Olypics videos. Looks like I needed to instal some plugin from Microsoft that only works with "approved" browsers. Silverlight?
I don't even mind if I'm bombarded with ads to see video. I would even pay for certain footage of one person I know competing in Beijing and some of the events. But a Microsoft player? No thanks.
Informative? Really? A slashdot poster hates M$? That's insightful? and to the poster....suck it up, crank up a virtual machine or visit a public machine and watch your friend...anti-M$ fanaticism is stupid...I'm not saying you have to feed them your cash day in and day out but don't be a flaming self-righteous idiot that misses your friends performances.
Not the most disrespectful behaviour. (Score:4, Insightful)
While NBC may well have done what they are accused of (I wouldn't know, the BBC had it all live and unedited), it's not the most insulting thing they've done.
They bribed the Chinese organisers of the Olympics to put certain events early in the morning (local time). The swimming starting soon is an example. Why? So they would be during prime time in America. This sound fair enough, until you realise that prime time in America is THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT IN EUROPE. So we get to miss half the events, just so it's a little more convenient for the Yanks. I mean, it's not like we invented the Olympics or anything...
Re:not a real issue (Score:5, Insightful)
Except in this case it doesn't give the impression that something very different happened since aside from the first and last countries the order that nations appear in the parade has no significance. Still it's a pretty stupid thing to change.
More important to me is that they put ads over the performances in the opening ceremony so we really did not get to see the full performance how it was intended.
Re:I'm sure I'm the only one on the planet, but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, they even beat the West in terms of carrying flags upside down. At least when the Americans carried a flag upside-down, it was a Canadian flag. That little runt of a kid they pulled out of the earthquake was carrying his own country's flag upside-down.
The only part of the ceremony that scared the fuck out of me was that nobody dared mention it on air, nor did anyone in the Chinese parade dare swap the kid's flag for one that was right-side-up.
An upside-down flag is an international signal of distress. In context of a political display, that kid was basically saying "My government hasn't even begun to help rebuild my village after the earthquake".
Precision? Discipline? Someone should have at seen a fuckup like an upside-down flag (your own flag, on the two most visible representatives of your country in the entire stadium) before the kid got into the arena. Comical.
There's a message in there about Chinese culture, too, and I don't think it was the one they wanted to send.
Re:olypics video tech (Score:5, Insightful)
Two questions for you:
Why should the IOC do something that would devalue what it produces? The Olympics are run on a shoestring budget compared to other "profitable" sports.
Why don't you care about the Winter Olympics in 2010?
Re:kids today... (Score:3, Insightful)
> Of course, the order of events in the news is only trivial.
Yeah, right! Next you'll be telling me Iraq went something like this:
(1) U.S. troops invaded Iraq and overthrew the governement
(3) Iraqis attacked U.S. troops
Oh, wait...
Re:This just in... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:kids today... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I'm sure I'm the only one on the planet, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
One thing that really hit me was how quickly they were able to expand their airport to accommodate for the Olympics. They now have the world's largest airport terminal, built up in almost no time at all. My home town (Vancouver, Canada) took nearly 20 years to build a single runway, between budget cutbacks, protests by residents, regulatory red tape, etc etc. Meanwhile here's a country that can completely rebuild an airport, make it into the world's largest, and still have time to make it an architectural masterpiece, all in 6 years. It's breathtaking and scary.
Before you all fall over yourself, it's entirely possible to do something of the like in the West too - when it matters enough. The Gemini/Mecury/Apollo programs in the 1960s for example, things got done when you're on the clock and national pride is in the balance. It's just rather hard to get that kind of support going...
Re:I'm sure I'm the only one on the planet, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Everybody should, it's one of the battlefields for Cold Wars. Countries with nukes can't fight each other directly, but they can use the world stage for cultural fights. They show off their achievements to intimidate and convince people their way is superior.
This year's Olympics are China's version of the moon landing
Re:I'm sure I'm the only one on the planet, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's just rather hard to get that kind of support going...
Damn right, especially these days, where the lack of the fear of communism has made driving these massive projects impossible. The problem is that the West requires consensus (or at least something resembling it) to do anything of that scale. China just has to have one guy snap his fingers.
Absolute power, when wielded by someone who knows how to use it, is very, very dangerous for his neighbours.
Re:olypics video tech (Score:2, Insightful)
Correct. I bet you missed to follow the extended how-to:
Re:I'm sure I'm the only one on the planet, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Meanwhile here's a country that can completely rebuild an airport, make it into the world's largest, and still have time to make it an architectural masterpiece, all in 6 years. It's breathtaking and scary.
Any country could do that.
They just have to have the money and the will to cut through the red tape.
The difference between China & the USA is that in the USA, one City accepts the honor. In China, the Central Government is in charge.
Re:This just in... (Score:5, Insightful)
You set up the question just so you could answer, didn't you?
Re:not a real issue (Score:2, Insightful)
I kind of wished they showed the Chinese characters at the bottom of the screen with the country name so that at least we would have a better understanding of what they meant by counting strokes, but then again since they changed the order of the countries appearing that would explain why they didn't do that.
Re:not a real issue (Score:2, Insightful)
A more correct example should be:
1. Blue car goes around the road, then parked in a parking spot
2. Red car goes around the road, then parked in a parking spot
3. Yellow car goes around the road, then parked in a parking spot
4. Green car goes around the road, then parked in a parking spot
No matter what order you change them, it doesn't change much of the overall story, as their order is not significant.
Re:This just in... (Score:2, Insightful)
Not just American media...
In fact, since most other countrys' media are government controlled, they probably do it more. Then they feed their stories into the international wires.
Media bias??? What media bias? We don't create the news, we just splice, edit, and reword to make it sell better.
NBC, CBS, ABC, AP, AFP, Reuters -- they're all selling purple Kool-aid.
You don't believe everything the Bush Administration says?
Good.
Go apply the same skepticism to the media.
Re:olypics video tech (Score:4, Insightful)
hate them? no. An individual's emotional response to a company doesn't do shit. They followed the rules of US capitalism with ruthless and unprincipled efficiency. For that, I kind of admire their dedication to an ideal, even if I dont agree with their behavior.
However, I've seen their actions and I know what they have done - to individuals, to companies, to the computer industry and to innovation in general. The actions the company has taken and continues to take have lead me to be a vocal and outspoken opponent of any product that bears the name, every partnership that involves them, and every business venture they are involved with.
You can attack that point of view, call me names from behind your AC shield, and act childish all you want. The word is not "fanaticism" - the one you have to understand is "accountability". Many in the US seem to have lost this concept in the last 10 years or so. Choosing to not to do business with them was easy and happened long ago. Microsoft has gone so much farther, and there is nothing they could do, short of a complete breakup of the company plus new management that would open my mind to trusting them.
live from japan (Score:2, Insightful)
i watched it live in japan-on NHK.
china was last, the USA somewhere near the middle/end.
i imagine that the entire show was edited...especially the CHEERS that the USA recieved when taking the field. (btw, north korea got cheered too!) the Australians and the British were also recieved well.
awesome show!
Re:This just in... (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, I consider the idea of "mainstream media" pure BS. It might mean something if it was coming from some actual fringe journalists. But it mostly comes from right wing journalists with a huge following, who build up this whole mythology of the "Liberal Elite" conspiring to screw over the U.S., with outlets like the NY Times as their media lapdogs. They "prove" by jumping on every real or supposed lapse in accuracy they can find, while being damned careless about their own fact checking.
Re:I'm sure I'm the only one on the planet, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
The Beijing Olympics are a huge matter of national pride in China. As others have mentioned the United States has had its moments of national pride. That's what drove us to the moon over the course of eight years. The moon landings cost us over three times what China spent preparing for the Olympics.
The US, UK, and Canada managed to develop nuclear weapons over the course of five years at a cost of $28 billion in today's dollars. We built the Panama Canal in ten years. We developed a cure for polio in 40 years. It's not so hard to imagine building an airport or even sprucing up an entire city from airport to subway to stadiums if there were a factor driving us to do so.
*China reportedly budgeted $2 billion for the event itself and over $100 million just on fireworks.
Re:kids today... (Score:5, Insightful)
How in gods name did people get the impression that this was a news? It called the opening ceremony. It is entertainment. News shows do not typically feature fireworks, dance performances, hundreds of syncronized drummers, a man on a cable running through the air to light a giant torch, or any of the rest of the ceremony. Because, it was a ceremony for the purpose of entertaining us.
Re:not a real issue (Score:2, Insightful)
I was told by someone from Shanghai that in Traditional Chinese (Mandarin) sorting is done by number of strokes, but the newer Simplified Chinese is sorted by alphabetical/phonetic pinyin.
Although when I asked about it I was inquiring how Windows Explorer sort files using Chinese characters.
Re:I'm sure I'm the only one on the planet, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
An upside-down flag is an international signal of distress.
Indeed, and I found Lin Hao carrying it a wonderful symbol of China's acknowledgement of the distress it experienced after the earthquake and the way in which China has finally become internationally open enough to let others know of its pain and to ask for assistance. The ceremony was full of contrasts, and the upside-down flag was just one more: the proud and powerful China walking next to the fragile and weak China that needs help (who is finally not afraid to ask for it). I found this and the other symbolism of the opening ceremony extremely moving.
In context of a political display, that kid was basically saying "My government hasn't even begun to help rebuild my village after the earthquake".
How did you interpret China parading both its strength and weakness, and the fact that it wants to display both to the world at this, one of its most important international moments, an anti-government message? How could you watch the almost unbelievable near-perfection of the rest of the ceremony (the printing press, the Tai Chi masters...) and think the flag could be an accident? It's really quite a stretch of the imagination.
There's a message in there about Chinese culture, too, and I don't think it was the one they wanted to send.
To me, they sent exactly the message I imagine they wanted to send. Perhaps they did fail at sending their message. But, if so, it was not a matter of the upside-down flag not being planned. Their failure would be that they expected you and the Western world to understand that their asking for help and letting their weakness and tragedy be seen is as important as a show of strength at the games.
Perhaps the government-run media did crop the flag from the images released within China to manage the internal interpretation. Perhaps it was a controversial decision that not everyone important knew about ahead of time, and that someone with power disapproved of after seeing. I'm not saying that this symbolism matches at all how the government operates, even if it seems to be moving in that direction. I'm not saying that it's part of the government's ideology or plan. But for what it is not, it is a powerful message that is hard to believe was not deliberate and planned at some type of government-approved level.
You are correct--I couldn't ever imagine seeing a US flag upside-down in an international ceremony. That's why I was especially touched to see China acknowledge their distress and their need for assistance in a way that my own country never would.
Re:This just in... (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems like it's one thing to rearrange Olympic Events in order to show the popular Events in prime-time. It's another to edit and reorder the events (little 'e') within a given Olympic Event. Like is it ok to rearrange the order of appearance in one of the gynastics events because you think it will make for better TV? If so, would it be ok for NBC to edit a basketball game so it looks like there are more baskets made toward the end of the game, in order to make it all more exciting?
Seems to me like it's just an issue of where you draw the line. Obviously a certain level of editing would be unacceptable.
Re:This just in... (Score:3, Insightful)
But it mostly comes from right wing journalists with a huge following, who build up this whole mythology of the "Liberal Elite" conspiring to screw over the U.S., with outlets like the NY Times as their media lapdogs.
I don't know about that. I see the term most often used by bloggers who want to deride sources of information that are considered more reliable than their own weblog.
But then I also see it being used (I think validly) as a means of lumping together the, what, 4 media companies who own every piece of music, every movie, and every television station. I mean, think about that for a second. Most of what you see and hear is being controlled and pushed on you by 4 companies. There has been evidence that these companies collude and work together. They fund the news and the art that shapes our culture, and they don't fund things that they perceive as endangering their business interests.
It's not about right-wing or left-wing. It's about money. There's a lot of money being put into the NY Times, FOX News, ABC News, etc. And that money isn't being put into those organizations out of altruism, it's being put in to make money and protect their other business interests.
Re:This just in... (Score:5, Insightful)
Boosting ratings doesn't explain why CBS News edited its interview with McCain [google.com] a few weeks ago. He came up with a goofy answer to some question and they rearranged the footage, splicing in his answer to some other question, in an attempt to make him appear to be less of an idiot. What was aired didn't match the transcript. Maybe next time they'll edit the transcript too.
After that, I find this NBC-Olympics story unimpressive. NBC messed with footage of the Olympics? Who cares?
Re:They ALTERED the CROWD NOISE too. (Score:3, Insightful)
Apparently, someone didn't notice that Iraq was barred from participating in the Olympics this year.