broadcaster – COOPER GENERAL NEWS

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.

LOS ANGELES, CA – JULY 23: Talk Show Host Larry King attends the 68th Los Angeles Area Emmy Awards at the Television Academy on July 23, 2016 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Michael Tullberg / Getty Images)

Michael Tullberg | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images

Larry King, the legendary American broadcaster that was a staple of cable news for decades, has died. He was 87 years old.

King died Saturday morning at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, according to Ora Media, the company King started after leaving CNN. No information was available about his cause of death.

King hosted a CNN talk show that became one of the network’s most watched and longest-running programs.

King was hospitalized for the coronavirus in December. He has also faced many medical problems, including type 2 diabetes, heart attacks, five-fold bypass surgery, and lung cancer.

His medical problems inspired him to found the Larry King Cardiac Foundation in 1988. The non-profit organization aims to help people without health insurance to get medical care.

King began his career as a radio journalist in Florida in the 1950s and became known in the late 1970s as the host of “The Larry King Show,” a nationwide call-in radio program for all night.

CNN launched the television talk show “Larry King Live” in 1985, which ran until 2010.

His awards included two peabodies, an Emmy, and 10 Cable ACE Awards.

For the most part, King conducted his interviews from the studio and wore his signature suspenders. He was known for asking his guests simple, open-ended questions, which made him an attractive interviewer for important figures in politics and Hollywood.

In 2012, King founded a production company called Ora TV with Mexican media magnate Carlos Slim. It was through this company that King moderated the “Larry King Now” web series, which was made available via the Hulu streaming service.

King was married eight times to seven women and fathered five children. His children with then wife Alene Akins, Andy and Chaia King, died within a few weeks in the summer of 2020. Andy, 65, died unexpectedly of a heart attack in July, and Chaia, 51, died in August after being diagnosed with lung cancer. Akins, a former Playboy bunny, died in 2017.

King had three other sons: Larry Jr. from his brief marriage to Annette Kaye and the sons Chance and Cannon from his marriage to Shawn Southwick. King filed for divorce from Southwick in 2019.