The 2022 Winter Olympics Get Off to Surreal Start on a Conflicted NBC

Two hours of parading nations later, IOC president Thomas Bach stood on the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony stage and did his finest to justify the Olympic perfect in 2022, a yr extra surreal than most. “Division, battle, and distrust are on the rise,” Bach mentioned. “[But] we present the world, sure, it’s attainable to be fierce rivals, however on the similar time residing peacefully and respectfully collectively.”

This sentiment, good although it’s, may come as a shock to these within the stadium, these not allowed wherever close to it, and people (like President Joe Biden) who boycotted the Video games as a matter of political protest. With the host nation below a microscope for reported human rights abuses and a brand new alliance towards the US with Vladimir Putin’s Russia, NBC had no alternative however to alternate its giddy protection of Group U.S.A. with dire reminders of this notably fraught world stage. By the point the ceremony closed with Bach imploring the world to “give peace an opportunity,” and a sweeping rendition of John Lennon’s “Think about” as is seemingly required of each Olympics now, the 2022 Winter Olympics grew to become precisely as surreal as could possibly be anticipated.

It’s no exaggeration to say that each sporting occasion of the previous two years has felt uncanny to witness, with the extremes of masked athletes waving up at empty stands and unmasked lots cheering as COVID circumstances hold spiking. However these Winter Olympics include an additional layer of unease, with the host nation of China doing its damnedest to minimize its home insurance policies of censorship, propaganda and, as growing proof exhibits, subjugation of the nation’s Uyghur Muslim inhabitants in camps the place they reportedly are struggling in subhuman situations. Watching the conflict of the grim actuality lurking simply exterior the stadium with the “shiny, completely satisfied folks” routine unfolding inside it was disorienting, to say the least. Throw within the the Ukraine delegation’s entrance chopping to a dozing Putin as NBC correspondents did their finest to contextualize Russia’s potential invasion, and the ceremony grew to become as weird because it was disquieting.

The urgent dilemma of the best way to cowl these particular Olympics was inevitable. Whereas the U.S. authorities selected a diplomatic boycott, NBC and the U.S. delegation didn’t. Given how a lot cash and work is all the time at stake with the Olympics, that by no means gave the impression to be an choice both the community or delegation ever critically thought of. And so, wanting pulling out of the occasions altogether, NBC must discover a strategy to tackle the urgent political and humanitarian issues with out dropping a lot buoyancy that its viewers would query why it was there in any respect.

For the opening ceremony, NBC’s answer to this downside largely got here all the way down to the hiring of two new correspondents — Bloomberg Information’ Andy Brown and Yale professor Jing Tsu — who may deliver of their China experience to contextualize the propaganda onscreen. Brown and Tsu did their finest to deliver acceptable gravitas to the state of affairs, and to their and Savannah Guthrie’s credit score, they didn’t shrink back from utilizing the phrase “genocide” to explain the remedy of China’s Uyghur Muslim inhabitants. It must also not go unmentioned that Tsu and Brown introduced this blunt context reside from onsite in Beijing, a call that’s particularly daring given China’s antipathy in direction of a free press. However the reality stays that their presence and information amounted to sporadic asterisks all through the in any other case uninterrupted broadcast. Brown and Tsu’s skill to plainly articulate the crises grew to become much more appreciated by the tip of the ceremony, nonetheless, when Mike Tirico stumbled his manner via an acknowledgment that one of many torchbearers was of the Uyghur inhabitants that “has attracted a lot consideration within the human rights neighborhood.”

If NBC is to maintain airing these Olympics, it’s laborious to say how rather more the community can conceivably do to contextualize the extraordinary geopolitical circumstances during which they’re going down. Guthrie wrapped the opening ceremony protection with a succinct reminder that what we simply noticed was a present during which inventive and political concerns converged. However watching Group USA broadly grin its manner via the ceremony, and understanding simply how a lot pomp and circumstance the Olympics obtain total, makes plain the place the priorities nonetheless lie, right here. So long as there are theatrics and athletics to awe, and billions of {dollars} to make alongside the best way, there’s apparently no quantity of humanitarian battle that may hold these Olympics from marching on.