Is a Georgian life worth less than a North American life? A question CTV and NBC need to answer

As millions of Canadians and Americans (and others worldwide) sat down last night to watch the opening ceremonies of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games, CTV and NBC seem to have made a barbaric and Machiavellian ratings decision to broadcast the Olympic equivalent of a snuff-film.

While CTV and NBC have made attempts to justify their decision to broadcast the death of a Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili, one really needs to wonder (little) if the nationality of Kumaritashvili had been Canadian or American, would the network executives have made a different decision.

It's no secret that due to the economic recession CTV/Rogers and NBC stand to lose money [2] on the securing of their respective Canadian and American broadcasting rights to the Vancouver Olympics as adverstising dollars are not projected to be enough to recover their initial investement. CTV made an executive decision to not only broadcast the death of Kumaritashvili on their prime-time opening show but also release their footage to other networks, while making it available for viewing on their website. NBC also decided [3] to broadcast this death video to their American audience.

CTVglobemedia's VP of corporate communications, Bonnie Brownlee, felt that CTV's decision to broadcast the death of luger Kumaritashvili was "proper" and, according to a Vancouver Sun report [4] (an outlet that decided to not feature the video on their website), Brownlee stated "After much consideration we decided to make available the images of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili's run."

Imagine, God forbid, if it had been Canadian sledding medal hopefuls Melissa Hollingsworth or Pierre Lueders, or American 'Flying Tomato' Shawn White or downhill skier Lindsey Vonn. Would CTV and NBC have decided to broadcaster their moments death? I think not.

While these are difficult questions, these are the questions that CTV and NBC should be made to answer (not rewarded) for their beyond callous decisions.

It is important to point out the hypocrisy of network television decisions. Again, I surmize that if the nationality of this luger had been Canadian or American, CTV and NBC would likely not have aired the death footage, as these same networks have often dedided to not broadcast more important stories or images of war [5], or of Canadian and American soldiers dying in Afghanistan or Iraq, or innocent civilians in said countries. Show all, or show none. But don't dehumanize some, and humanize others.

[On another matter: As to VANOC, the IOC, and the International Luge Federation (the groups responsible for the design and sanctioning of the sledding course, and today, the reopening of the course with a modest raising of the wall in the corner in question), why haven't their technicians and engineers figured out, what many lay men and lay women have already, that they need to cover the area above the wall, with a protective additional wall of plexiglas, plywood, or even a sturdy net so that a sledder who jumps the wall would continue to bounce forward, not simply be stopped dead in their tracks from impacting a pillar at 140kms plus. VANOC, the IOC, and the ILF should consider themselves forewarned, and therefore responsible for any future injuries or deaths.]

Dr. Paul Boin (pboin@uwindsor.ca [6]) is an assistant professor of media studies at the University of Windsor [7], founder of the Media Justice Project [8] and is the research coordinator for the Haiti Media Research Project [9] (If you're interested in becoming involved in this media research project contact pboin@uwindsor.ca [6]). His forthcoming book "Media for the Public Mind: Creating a Democratic and Informative News Media" will be published by Fernwood Publishing in the Fall of 2010.

Comments

Submitted by M. Spector on February 14, 2010 - 1:25am.

To censor the news because it is shocking is unacceptable in a society that aspires to freedom of the press. Would Boin have suppressed video of the Indonesian tsunami, of the World Trade Centre attacks, of the tasering death of Robert Dziekanski?

Maybe the death of a Canadian luger would not be shown on Canadian TV, and that would be hypocritical. But why should we hold out that (wrong) attitude as a standard of acceptable media censorship?

The death of Nodar Kumaritashvili probably resulted from incompetence and bad decision-making on the part of Canadian Olympic officials, designers, planners, and/or the International Luge Federation. We the public are entitled to know the awful truth about what happened. We are entitled to be shocked and outraged by it, without having our shock and outrage controlled or managed by the mass media.

I note that when Boin was challenged on this by a commenter on his Media Justice blog he responded that the point he was making was simply about media hypocrisy. He is being disingenuous; Boin is very clear in the above post that he thinks that showing the luge video (which he outrageously characterized as a "snuff-video") was wrong, and that it should be suppressed by the media in the interests of consistency with their previous decisions to suppress other news video.

I would take Boin's concern about media hypocrisy more seriously if he were writing about it in the context of an instance of Canadian media suppression of video showing the death of a Canadian athlete, soldier, or whatever, and if he were denouncing such suppression as hypocrisy, which it would certainly be. Instead, he's happy to undo the media's hypocrisy by calling for all such news video to be suppressed, rather than supporting a policy of consistent disclosure.

Submitted by Paul D. Boin on February 15, 2010 - 9:45am.

I stand by my opinion and belief that CTV or NBC would not have chosen to broadcast the images of the moment of death of an Olympic athlete if that athlete had been North American. As I also said, show all or show none. I would prefer networks show all but as CTV, NBC, and pretty-much all mainstream tv outlets, have demonstrated in the past with their regular self-censoring of war coverage this will likely not be the case. (so in that anti-censurship respect, we are in agreement). Unfortunately, these same networks that regularily censor war coverage felt it was ok to not censor a Georgian sporting death.

Submitted by M. Spector on February 18, 2010 - 3:57pm.

This post has been deleted three times. Maybe the fourth time will be lucky:

Boin wrote:

Unfortunately, these same networks that regularily (sic) censor war coverage felt it was ok to not censor a Georgian sporting death.

And what Prof. Boin finds unfortunate about that is that he wishes they had suppressed the video of the Georgian sporting death - a fact which he prefers to skate around rather than explain. He's not against censorship; he just thinks it's being applied to the wrong news stories.