London calling

 JournalismPakistan.com |  Published: 2 June 2012 |  Steve Manuel

This article critiques the disparity between genuine sports journalists and opportunistic individuals who exploit the Olympics for personal gain. It highlights the challenges faced by true professionals in getting the recognition they deserve.

Summary

SAN JOSE, CA: Every four years, around this time, sports reporters, writers and journalists the world over start jockeying and pushing in all earnestness to get an opportunity to cover the world’s premier sports event… the Olympic Games. Some of them start their preparations months before hands, writing on issues and indicators leading up to the Games.

These are the genuine sports journalists who know their work is their ticket to the Olympics. They are experts in their chosen sport and the personalities that make it happen. When the time comes, their media organization knows who has to be sent and they do. And then there are those who have barely done a thing in the past but are yet to miss an Olympics.

These are the wheeler dealers, the manipulators and the bull-shitters who pass themselves off as sports journalists. The sad thing is that there are plenty of them in the developing world and the same goes for Pakistan as well. Indeed, they come crawling out of the woodwork like seasonal insects.

These are the guys who get tickets to the Olympics because they know somebody high up in a sports federation, the national Olympics body or better still, the sports minister. These are the guys who put pressure on the editor into getting what they want. There is a word for them – excess baggage!! I prefer to call them scum. These men have no shame just like they know nothing about sports.

Yet they adorn themselves with badges and lapel pins, ties, blazers and fancy hats and are armed with albums of photographs spotlighting their so-called association or friendship with famous sports personalities. These are the men that go to the Olympics as tourists, availing the opportunity to the hilt.

Some of them disappear never to come back, others go on shopping sprees for their families if and when they are sober from all the drink they have consumed at ‘Olympic’ parties. They barely ever report on the sports discipline they are supposedly experts in. Agency stories are carried in newspapers instead with a few lines at the bottom of the story with the prefix: ‘Our correspondent adds’.

Meanwhile, back at the sports desk the sports editor is left fuming every night waiting for a story that never comes. When it does come it is so inferior and lacking information that it needs a major rewrite. Also at the sports desk is probably a sport reporter or two who has worked hard the whole year long but could not be sent because the quota was for only one.

Sometimes, it’s the sports editor who decides it is he who will be attending the Olympics.

Now this gent, who has barely scraped together a story or two the whole year, suddenly asserts himself as the person who should be going because he: 1) Is senior 2) Is the sports editor 3) Knows more 4) Has the editor’s ear 5) Knows or is related to somebody in the national Olympics body 6) Knows or is related to somebody in some federation 7) Knows or is related to the sports minister 8) Knows or is related to the president or prime minister 9) Has influential and powerful political connections 10) Wants to go because he needs a break 11) His wife has never been to an Olympics 12) He never went to the last Olympics 13) There was nobody else to go 14) He wants to go Basically this guy would not know the difference between volleyball and a basketball, a shot putt from discus, a kayak from a canoe, and a hockey stick from a crosse, a slam dunk from a goal, a bull’s eye from a crosshair, a velodrome from a track or a corner shot from a KO!!!

Pakistan too has plenty of these guys who, higgledy-piggledy, come what may, have to be part of that contingent that goes to the Olympics.

Somehow, the same old faces suddenly appear, glazed sports blazers come out replete with badges and pins, visits to the offices of federations begin, intense conversations on the phone take up all day, ‘important meetings’ takes them away from the office…. so on and so forth.

Guys who have been in a slumber all year are suddenly making visits to the editor or director programs’ office or to the finance department when they are not busy trying to get their travel documents completed. Oh… it’s a rat race alright! Well, once again this year the cogs and wheels of this four-yearly phenomenon/pilgrimage have been set in motion. Plans are being made and put into action.

Somebody is going to the Olympics and woe betide any that come in the way. This bunch of vultures will, for the next four years tell tall tales in which they supposedly advised some top sports personality into performing better, breaking a world record or even offering them full time jobs as advisers/consultants which they could not take because they ‘love Pakistan so dearly’.

For all those genuine sports journalists who do not have the wherewithal to grasp such opportunities my deepest sympathies and support, and for those that do get the chance to enjoy London 2012, please do at least make an attempt to send a few worthy sport stories.

Otherwise, I guess, we will be seeing you after four years when you re-emerge from your ancestral ‘khood’. (Steve Manuel is the Founder and Chief Editor of JournalismPakistan.com. During his journalistic career he has reported extensively on Pakistan sports. He is a former national broad jump champion and now lives in the US.)