Nightly News advertorial for Olympics--Washington Post

Paul Farhi monitored coverage among ESPN, CNN, and the NBC station and found:

• ""Nightly News," by contrast, was all over the Olympics. Man, were they all over them. First, Ann Curry gave the opening "billboards" for the top stories, which included a couple of Olympics-related features. Then, on came the Olympic news like the parade at the Opening Ceremonies.

Curry mentioned Bolt, the medal count, and the news that an athlete from Afghanistan had won his country's first medal ever. Then there was a feature on American sprinter Allyson Felix, and another feature on a Chinese woman who coaches the American women's volleyball team.

• Even Tom Brokaw's story on how Chinese students out-perform Americans in math and science (this is news?) had an Olympic peg (Curry's intro: "Here in Beijing, China's athletes have proven themselves to be tough competitors in these Olympics. The fact is Americans have found in recent years that competition from China extends far beyond sports to science and mathematics...").

Oh, yeah: Curry managed to squeeze in a story about the Spanish plane crash and a new presidential poll (I don't think either mentioned the Olympics).

• In other words, "Nightly News," which rarely cares about sports, was out-reporting "SportsCenter," the leading sports-news broadcast on TV, about the Olympics. High-fives, NBC News!"....

via Poynter.org/Romenesko

• (Note: The article acknowledges NBC's exclusive rights to video footage, but moves beyond that). sm

Tweet Stumbleupon StumbleUpon