\n Hundreds of athletes will parade into a stadium in front of world leaders, including President Bush, and a huge global television audience. If an athlete holds a protest sign or waves a Tibetan flag, how will the Chinese hosts react? Will the television networks show the scene? How will the Chinese handle the media for the rest of the Games?<\/p>\n
The stakes are high for both the network, which paid $900 million for broadcast rights for the Olympics, and the reputation of NBC News. If it covers any controversies aggressively, it risks drawing the ire of the Chinese and interfering with coverage of sports events. But if it shies from coverage of any protests, NBC risks being criticized in the West for kowtowing to China \u2014 particularly since its corporate parent, General Electric, is aggressively expanding its investments in China.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The New York Times today has an editorial expressing concern over press freedom in China int he run-up to the Olympics: To win the right to host the Games, Beijing promised to expand press freedoms for foreign reporters and implied that opening China to the world would help expand human rights more generally. We will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[13,34,100],"tags":[6403,273],"class_list":["post-22026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beijing-olympics-2008","category-human-rights","category-politics","tag-olympics-media","tag-press-freedom","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"\n
China\u2019s Unreality TV<\/title>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n