Misdirection In The Olympic Village?
News March 8th, 2008
Tim Johnson writes on his blog:
Covering the run-up to the Olympics can be quite maddening in China. Chinese officials flood us with minute details but refuse to answer basic questions, such as about security, anti-doping measures or food safety.
Olympics officials offered a tour and a press conference earlier this week of the newly finished Olympic Village where some 16,000 athletes and officials will stay during the Games. The facilities are beautiful.
But a British colleague and I walked out of the press conference shaking our heads. Authorities offered excruciating detail about the double-glazing of the windows in the Village and the environmental considerations going into construction of the 42 dormitory-style six- and nine-story buildings.
When it came time for questions, only three were taken, and the answers were boilerplate.
It seems like a certain amount of it is cultural… when faced with a direct question, most Chinese like to respond with a piece of vaguely-related information, and I’m sure that media experts are even better at this.
But what about when there’s actual news? It’ll be interesting to see how this pans out at the actual games.
Via China Rises: Notes From The Middle Kingdom
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Kind of like the hijacking incident. All the government has said about it is “China is safe”.
Yeah, definitely is interesting to see how the Chinese officials respond to difficult news stories and events. It caught the western media’s attention that it took 2 days for a response to Steven Spielberg’s resignation. They’re going to be seriously well drilled by the time the 8th of the 8th rolls around!!