For television broadcasters worldwide, the Parade of Nations during the opening of the Olympics can be an exercise in diplomacy and global awareness, with the media resorting to trivia nuggets, athlete profiles, and geopolitical considerations to fill airtime.
However, a South Korean broadcaster has apologized for its selection of “inappropriate” images that appeared alongside the names of several countries during its coverage of the opening ceremony on Friday.
The images were criticized by viewers who said they were offensive or perpetuated stereotypes.
When the contingent of Olympic athletes from Italy entered the Tokyo Olympic Stadium for the Parade of Nations, the broadcaster MBC broadcast a photo of a pizza.
For Norway? A piece of salmon.
Then there was Ukraine, which the station reminded viewers of where the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster occurred, complete with a photo of the doomed power plant.
“The pictures and captions should make it easier for viewers to quickly understand the countries of entry during the opening ceremony,” said MBC in a statement published on Twitter on Saturday. “However, we admit that there has been a lack of consideration for the affected countries and the inspection has not been thorough enough. It is an unforgivable mistake. “
Raphael Rashid, a freelance journalist from Seoul, shared the pictures on Twitter.
“When Haitian athletes entered the stadium, the screen said, ‘The political situation is obscured by the assassination of the president,'” Rashid wrote. “When Syrian athletes walked in, it was said, ‘Rich underground resources; a civil war that has been going on for 10 years. ‘”
For Romania, the station used a picture of Count Dracula. And for the Marshall Islands, it found that it had once been a nuclear test site for the United States.
When it was Malaysia’s turn in the Parade of Nations, MBC showed a graph showing that country’s coronavirus vaccination rate along with its gross domestic product.
In its statement, MBC said it would look into the process of how the images and their accompanying captions were selected and verified.
“We will also thoroughly review the production system of sports programs in order to avoid similar accidents in the future,” said the broadcaster.
The Korea Herald reported that this was not the first time MBC went wrong during the Olympics.
In 2008, according to the news website, the station was fined by the Korea Communications Commission for using its captions to belittle countries participating in the Beijing Olympics. The station described Sudan as an unstable country with a long civil war and Zimbabwe as a country with deadly inflation.
