Well, there's a surprise

The Beijing Olympics is bringing the IOC into disrepute

No, not that fact that the author has pretty much been universally slammed (nothing to read into that, really. I rather depends on who is trawling and trolling that day)... in the Telegraph!

It was this bit that, though only by one person's word, caught my wistful attention 'I imagine that for those watching in Britain through the misty-eyed lens of the BBC, the Beijing Games are living up to expectations. The view from the pressroom, however, is altogether gloomier.'

Not so much for what was written, but that there was no real sense that it was odd that our national, publicly-funded broadcaster, especially its news-bearing arm (quite big and well funded, not to say represented there, I'd imagine) is 'different' to those others in the press room, and oddly capable of bearing to its paymasters a different 'alternate reflection of accuracy' than all others. Quite makes the licence fee look worth... what... again?

Addendum - Well, another, though confirmatory voice, this time from Ch4 (and suggsteing the Gaurdian too)...

FROM ALEX AT THE BEIJING OLYMPICS
Hail from The Jing. It’s been a weird kind of day with, on the face of it, rather a lot by way of heats at these Olympics and rather less in the way of finals and particular ones of British interest.

So I went off to the BOCOG/IOC press conference this morning – that is, the Beijing Organising Committee for the Olympic Games and the International Olympic Committee.

Sounds impressive eh? And in its way it is. Though not, sadly, as a press conference. It is, for instance, a sensational situation comedy. Or a rare example in the modern world of truly Ruritanian politics. Or perhaps it is the nearest you will get to an extra-terrestrial out-of-body experience without taking a vast whack of acid.

Because these two bodies very obviously inhabit a different time-space-continuum to you or me.

This morning's edition was mint. First off, Mr Wang Wei took us through statistics about how many officials, journalists and athletes had been at the different venues and ended, as ever, with the weather forecast for the various Olympic sites.

Then a radical shift, as his colleague then took off on addressing cultural affairs. The man from The Guardian in the row in front of me wrote THIS IS A DELAYING TACTIC on his notebook and passed it to me.

Well, perhaps it was. Whatever the truth of it, we needed to talk about whether or not the IOC is embarrassed in any way about throwing in its lot with a government which has so patently failed to keep promises on press freedoms and human rights. This lies at the heart of these games since assurances on this were one of the reasons China got the games in the first place.

You can see what happened tonight when we tried to find out. And what happened when the Chinese allowed protesters to make legal demonstrations in three parks in the city. You need permits to do so. And guess what, nobody seems to have got one.

Evasion and untruths: an everyday tale from the land of the Chinese Olympics. Cheers, Alex T

Alex Thomson takes on the IOC: http://tinyurl.com/6pwjlf

Alex Thomson’s Beijing blog: http://tinyurl.com/67zsm5

Danny Vincent’s blog: http://tinyurl.com/5lzwqg

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