Not Going to Game Plan 

MEDIA ORGANISATIONS HAVE MOVED INTO CRISIS MANAGEMENT IN THE LEAD-UP TO BEIJING'S OLYMPIC GAMES, WRITES NICOLE JEFFERY. CARTOON BY ANDREW WELDON.

There is one issue designed to give editors night terrors as they prepare to send teams to cover the Beijing Olympics in August. It is not the health and hygiene risks (although they are acknowledged). It is not the heavy-handed security that is likely to restrict normal journalistic access to places and people (despite spurious guarantees that western-style press freedoms will apply). It is not internet access (although it seems ever more apparent that the promises of unfettered access for journalists will be broken, if not by censorship then by technical inadequacies).

These are mere irritants compared with the dangers of the 72-hour law.  Under local law, a foreign national can be detained for 72 hours before the Chinese authorities are required to inform the detainee’s embassy that he or she is in custody.

With more than 20,000 foreign media representatives flooding into Beijing in August, the chances of one falling foul of unyielding security forces, and disappearing without a trace for three days, are high.

According to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, China jails more journalists than any other country. Thirty-five Chinese journalists are now serving jail terms for raising the ire of the state.

Jailing foreign journalists would be the quickest way to a public relations disaster for China during the Olympics. In that circumstance, China’s “coming out party’’ would become a lynching, but that reality is yet to penetrate the thinking of the Communist Party mandarins.

The International Olympic Committee is sharing the nightmare because 10,000 athletes are also classified as foreign nationals. It is doing its utmost to extract a guarantee from the Chinese Government that if anyone who carries Olympic accreditation is detained, it will be informed immediately. So far, the negotiations are proceeding slowly. At a recent briefing for media attending the Games, one Olympic official referred to Beijing as the “suck-it-and-see’’ Olympics.

Every organisation trying to negotiate with the Beijing Organising Committee (BOCOG) has become used to inscrutable responses.

The Australian Olympic Committee’s advice is that there will be precious few guarantees for media attending the Games. Leading Australian media organisations are concerned enough to be considering taking their own security and medical personnel to Beijing as crisis managers.

Now the preparation includes health screenings, compulsory vaccinations, in-house security briefings, thorough information dissemination from the Australian Olympic Committee, covering everything from blogging guidelines to menus in the media villages, and wide-ranging reconnaissance tours to Beijing.

My own pre-Games tour got off to a bumpy start when a front wheel fell off my taxi on the fourth ring road about a kilometre from my hotel just half an hour after arriving at Beijing airport.

And if you don’t speak Mandarin, like our Prime Minister, it’s advisable to ask your hotel concierge to write down your destination in Chinese script and give you a hotel card so you can find your way back.

But that will be the least of journalists’ problems when East meets West in Beijing. The concept of press freedom remains alien in China, as shown by its xenophobic response to the recent Tibetan protests during the international legs of the torch relay.

China’s default position, as illustrated by the Tibetan riots, is to bar access to any information or event which might damage the country’s image.

Chinese authorities, including BOCOG, are designed to confine rather than reveal information, even on unthreatening subjects. Changing that mindset and the habits of a lifetime is not the work of a few months.

For the Olympic Games, China has agreed to loosen the shackles and allow foreign correspondents to travel within China and interview nationals without obtaining government permission.

However, these freedoms have not been extended to domestic media, and the legislation allowing concessions for foreign journalists has an October 2008 sunset clause.

Internet restrictions also remain an issue. People within China are unable to access news and information websites, including the BBC, Wikipedia and even Encyclopaedia Britannica. Sites belonging to any organisation considered subversive, including human rights groups, are blocked. YouTube was disabled when amateur videos of the Tibetan unrest were posted in April.

BOCOG officials said at the world press briefing last October that uncensored and swift internet access would be available from July 8, but IOC officials remain concerned about its delivery. In February, when I visited, it seemed unlikely. What was described as broadband internet access at the swimming venue, known as the Water Cube, was at best half the speed expected in western countries. Wireless internet worked at no more than dial-up speed. Some web-based email providers didn’t work at all.

Most western media organisations are planning to put all kinds of bells and whistles on their websites for the Olympics, but there is serious doubt about China’s ability to provide the technology to allow it. The media websites may yet be forced back to basics.

The BOCOG media officials, at least at ground level, acknowledge they have much to learn about providing basic media services, including start lists, statistical and biographical information about competitors, and interview access.

The formal processes seem excessively unwieldy and bureaucratic, not promising for an international media corps intent on meeting its deadlines.

But, to their credit, the young, English-speaking staff and volunteers were eager to get it right, surprisingly flexible and open to advice.

That augurs well for working conditions within the venues, but for journalists working outside the Olympic precinct, it will be another world, where the 72-hour rule looms large.

Nicole Jeffery is a senior sportswriter for The Australian. She will be attending her fifth summer Olympic Games in Beijing.
Andrew Weldon is a freelance cartoonist.