A Truly Outdated View of Journalism for the 2008 Beijing Olympics

This is a repost of an article I just wrote for Social Studies, our social media blog at work. Actually, to be fair, its the pre-edited version. Apparently, aspects were too controversial. It's my first article so I'm kind of dorkily proud. Here's to a small victory in the attempt to break into the social media boys club.

A Truly Outdated View of Journalism for the 2008 Beijing Olympics

Recently the International Olympic Committee (IOC) issued their guidelines for blogging, podcasts, and photoblogging for the 2008 Beijing Games.

The guidelines are rules for blogging and any other user-generated content and actually start "8 days prior to the Opening Ceremony of the Games until 3 days after the Closing Ceremony of the Games." The guidelines state directly that: "The IOC considers blogging, in accordance to these Guidelines, as a legitimate form of personal expression and not as a form of journalism." Since the IOC does not consider blogging a form of journalism, it will not be allowed. The IOC goes on to define a blog as a personal diary and directly states that as a personal diary blog entries are prohibited from containing interviews, videos or stories about people at the games. In addition, athletes and other "Accredited Persons" (media respresentatives, officials and staff) are banned from podcasting or photoblogging.

I have always enjoyed the Olympics in the past and have been fascinated by certain athletes and teams. Allowing the athletes, staff, officials, media representatives and the attendees to blog about their experiences at the Games would make them into a much richer experience for those of us who aren't attending the Games for a variety of reasons.

A large part of me wonders if the real reason behind the decision to ban podcasting and photoblogging is an agreement between the Chinese government and the IOC to impose the censorship for the citizens of China onto the global citizenship attending and/or watching the Games. However, the real question is if this will work.

And to quote some questions by one of my coworkers:

Is the IOC trying to control something that is inherently uncontrollable, based on an outdated notion of commercial ownership of the event? Will citizen journalists step up and continue to blog despite the prohibition against it? Will the IOC truly sue thousands of people? And, how will they find the people? Will internet providers, mobile companies and actual governments turn over the offending users' personal information to the IOC?

Seems highly unlikely.

Another important question is how the IOC will deal with the mainstream media blogs that currently exist. For example, ESPN has a blog, ESPN Olympics Blog. NBC has a number of blogs about the Olympics on their NBC Olympics website. The New York Times also has a blog dedicated to the 2008 Games. Based on the IOC guidelines for the blogging, are these blogs in direct violation of the rules? Will these mainstream media outlets be sued for violating the prohibition on writing blogs containing interviews, videos or stories about people at the games?

I guess only time will tell.