Broadcaster Apologizes for ‘Inappropriate’ Footage Posted During the Olympics


For television broadcasters worldwide, the parade of nations during the opening of the Olympics can be an exercise for diplomacy and global awareness, as media outlets resort to trivia, athlete profiles, and geopolitical considerations to fill airtime.

But a South Korean broadcaster apologized for selecting “inappropriate” images that appeared next to the names of various countries on Friday while broadcasting the opening ceremony.

The footage drew criticism from viewers who said they were offensive or perpetuated stereotypes.

As a contingent of Olympic athletes from Italy enter the Tokyo Olympic Stadium for the nations parade, broadcaster MBC has released a photo of a pizza.

For Norway? A piece of salmon.

Then there was Ukraine, where the broadcaster reminded viewers that it was the site of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, complete with a photo of the doomed power plant.

“The images and titles are intended to make it easier for viewers to quickly understand the countries of entry during the opening ceremony,” MBC said in an English-language statement released Saturday. excitement. “However, we acknowledge that it has not been taken into account for the countries concerned and the audit is not comprehensive enough. This is an unforgivable mistake.”

Seoul-based freelance journalist Raphael Rashid drew attention to the images from Twitter.

“As the Haitian athletes entered the stadium, a statement on the screen said, ‘the political situation was blurred by the assassination of the president’. “When Syrian athletes enter, ‘rich underground resources; A civil war that has been going on for 10 years.’”

For Romania, the publisher used an image of Count Dracula. And for the Marshall Islands, he noted, it was once a nuclear test site for the United States.

When it came to Malaysia at the crossing of nations, MBC showed a chart with that country’s coronavirus vaccination rate along with its gross domestic product.

MBC said in a statement that it will investigate the process of how images and accompanying captions are selected and reviewed.

“We will also fundamentally re-examine the production system of sports programs to prevent similar accidents in the future,” the broadcaster said.

Korean Messenger reports that this is not the first time MBC has taken a wrong step during the Olympics.

In 2008, the news site said the broadcaster was penalized by the Korea Communications Commission for insulting countries participating in the Beijing Olympics with their captions. The publisher described Sudan as an unstable country with a long civil war and Zimbabwe as a country with deadly inflation.





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