A nod to online power

9Aug07

Source: Glenda Korporaal, The Australian

THE 2008 Olympics in Beijing will be the first true internet Games, with the International Olympic Committee keen to exploit the advantages and reach of the new media, according to Australia’s senior IOC member Kevan Gosper.

In an interview with Media this week, Mr Gosper, who is head of the IOC Press Commission, said it was the big media groups covering the Olympics – including news agencies, newspapers and television broadcasters – that were keen to push the envelope on the use of the internet to cover the Games.

And the IOC was also keen to use the internet to promote the Games to a younger audience.

Mr Gosper said the IOC Press Commission had initially been concerned about protecting the rights of the officially accredited Olympic media when looking at issues such as whether athletes should be allow to write blogs during the Games.

But the media companies told the IOC that interactivity and the digital media were the way of the future.

The IOC Press Commission has recommended that blogging by athletes should be allowed for the first time during the 2008 Games.

A final decision on the issue will be taken at an IOC executive board meeting later this year.

Mr Gosper pointed to "the rate of change in the digital media in terms of reporting and its audience".

"While this puts pressure on the traditional press, both written and electronic, they have also become involved in the digital media process.

"So instead of resisting or seeing the use of websites and the internet and blogging as competition to their own activities, they are embracing it," he said.

Mr Gosper, who is also vice-chairman of the IOC’s Co-ordination Commission overseeing the 2008 Games, said the internet meant individuals as well as professional journalists could be a source of news.

"The audience has also changed dramatically, particularly in respect of young people, who have moved to their computer screens to read the news highlights and to follow their heroes and personalities much more than (before)," he said.

However, growing use of the internet also posed some risks.

"The national Olympic committees were initially concerned that the athletes could get commercial backing for their blogging or they might use it to criticise other competitors or their own team-mates," Mr Gosper said.

The IOC Press Commission will develop guidelines for athletes who want to blog during the Games, and they will become part of the contract they sign with the IOC before they can compete.

"It’s a whole new world and it’s all happening at a time when the Games are going into a communist society that has historically been quite strict … on the media," he said.

The IOC at present allows TV broadcasters that have paid millions of dollars in broadcast rights to handle the commercial exploitation of moving images from the Games on the internet.

Mr Gosper said this would be the case for the broadcast rights negotiations for the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver and the 2012 London Games.

But in the future it would be possible to negotiate internet rights as a separate package.

"It could be that stand-alone digital rights might become a part of the play," he said. "In that case, you start to negotiate in a different fashion."

A precedent in this respect has already been set, with the IOC selling an internet and mobile phone rights package for the 2008 Games separate from the TV, rights, which have gone to the government-run CCTV.

Next year’s Olympics have already attracted a great deal of interest from the foreign media: the IOC has been flooded with more than three times the usual number of requests.

The IOC has completed extensive negotiations with the Chinese Government to free up restrictions on foreign journalists covering the Games, including the Olympic torch relay, which will pass through Tibet, a sensitive area for Beijing, as well as the 31 Chinese provinces.

Mr Gosper, who won a silver medal in the 4x400m relay in the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, said changes to the legislation had to pass 13 divisions of the national Government in Beijing, including security and foreign affairs.

"The changes to the regulations were not simply in terms of reporting on the Games and reporting on the environment of the Games, but they have also included interviewing athletes, people associated with the Games and journalists travelling within the country who will be following the torch relay," he said.

Mr Gosper said the agreement to loosen restrictions included a commitment to free up the internet for journalists during the Beijing Games.

He said Chinese leaders from President Hu Jintao down had repeatedly assured the IOC they would honour their commitment in ensuring that media groups covering the 2008 Games would be allowed the same freedoms as at previous Olympics.

"(But) there is still considerable work to be done by the Co-ordination Commission to have (the Beijing organising committee) fully understand the degree of on-the-ground practicality which has got to apply."

For example, Mr Gosper expects the opening up of the internet will happen in stages. "It won’t come overnight. And if that’s the case, I’ll live with it."

Chinese organisers faced a test of their new attitude to the foreign media this week when the Paris-based organisation Reporters Without Borders staged a protest on a pedestrian bridge in Beijing, unfurling posters that depicted the Olympic rings as handcuffs.

The protesters said they were not calling for a boycott of the Games but for the release of political prisoners and activists who had published their views on the internet.

Chinese police went to the hotels of the protesters and their associated delegation and told them to leave the next day.

Mr Gosper said the IOC had been informed of the event and believed the Chinese had handled the issue flexibly.

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