Athlete Blogs Are OK At Olympics, But Barely So
The International Olympic Committee, still sitting high on its all-rights-are-ours horse, has opened up a little, allowing athletes to blog at the Olympics for the first time, in time for the Beijing Olympics coming up in August this year. Under the new rules, blogs are allowed as long as they are used for personal expression and not journalism, meaning “it be confined solely to their own personal Olympic-related experience”, reports Reuters. In practice this means no Olympic visual or audio material and any confidential information on third parties.
– Athletes or officials can post still pictures taken outside accredited areas or their own pictures taken within these areas that do not contain any sporting action.
– Blogs should not have exclusive agreements with any company and there should be no commercial reference or advertising either.
And wonder how will they police all this? And when will it cross into censorship line?
Is this story about the heavy handed approach to ownership of coverage or the muzzling of political debate? I don't know what I'm supposed to be worried about.
Presumably, any serious blog posts woudl see the offending athlete thrown out. But what's a serious blog? Imagine the negative PR shet fist created by an athlete getting thrown out after blogging about a how expensive their Mastercard bill was.
Event sponsors have been confiscating competitor brand drinks cups for years. Should these rules really surprise us?
I know the IOC and the Games themselves are not contained within any US jurisdiction, but I can't help but let my mind wander onto the thoughts of freedom of speech.
Is there anything to indicate that an Olympic athlete could not correspond directly with another blogger to 'ghostwrite' anything outside of their "own personal Olympic-related experience”?