A little more balance in Olympic coverage, please

I watched a few hours of the Olympics last night and was struck by the paucity of coverage of non-American athletes. We had the men’s gymnastics competition on and got to see every success and failure of Team USA. The performances of the other four squads in the finals, however, were brought to us via highlight, despite the fact that the favored American team finished fifth.

The Chinese won the competition and the Brits, the games’ hosts, took a bronze, the “British men’s first team medal in a century.”

I understand that American audiences want American athletes, but we also want great performances. The Americans have won six golds and 18 medals, compared with nine golds and a total of 17 medals for the Chinese. One could argue that the Chinese should be sharing the focus with the Americans and, going forward, we’d see better coverage of other international athletes.

As a kid, I can remember the focus being more balance. I’m hoping that this is just an early blip and that we’ll be seeing a lot more of an international flavor as we move forward into the individual events.

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Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie. View all posts by hankkalet