Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, April 11th question: serving the media to make the Winter Olympics wonderful
— visiting Anthony, the media operation director of the International Olympic Committee
Xinhua News Agency reporter Ji Ye Wang Yong
The Story of the Olympic Stadium, it can always stir people’s hearts, and the media is the most important carrier to make these stories spread all over the world. As Samaranch, the honorary president of the International Olympic Committee for life, said, “the media is the judge of the success of the Olympic Games”. It is an essential task for a successful Olympic Games to do a good job in media operation and serve the media so that they can finish their work smoothly.
What is media running? What role does it play in an Olympic Games? What does Xinhua News Agency mean to become an international news agency recognized by the International Olympic Committee? Anthony Edgar, the media operation director of the International Olympic Committee, gave the answer.
This week, the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics held the first world news agency conference. This is the first time that BOCOG officially introduced the progress of media operation preparations to major news organizations around the world. The nine news agencies invited to attend the meeting include the Associated Press, Reuters, AFP, Xinhua News Agency and other four international news agencies recognized by the International Olympic Committee, as well as the Gatti photo agency, the European news photo agency, the Kyodo News Agency of Japan, the United States today, world famous news organizations such as the New York Times.
Anthony said: “The representatives of these news agencies came to Beijing this time to learn about the preparations for the Beijing Winter Olympics. I exchanged views with representatives of major news agencies, and we all have very high expectations for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.”
The media operation related to the Olympic Games mainly involves providing working environment, facilities and services for the media such as videos, texts and pictures registered in the Olympic Games. For example, the main news center and venue media center construction, photography services, as well as media accommodation, transportation, technology, network, registration, charge card, Olympic information services, etc. In addition to meeting these basic reporting needs of the media, it is also necessary to provide professional services for different customer groups, such as media workshop rental, photography and instant transmission technical support, etc.
In addition to the services for text, photography and non-rights broadcasters, another important component of media operation is the Olympic relay service, assisting the Olympic relay service company (OBS) and rights-holding broadcasters provide Olympic broadcasting and television public signals to the world’s Olympic rights-holding broadcasters.
As the largest sports event in the world, the Olympic Games attracted thousands of journalists to report. If you count the number of OBS, there are about 25000 registered media in the summer Olympics and 15000 in the Winter Olympics. The difficulty of media operation is self-evident.
Anthony bluntly said that the operation of Olympic media is to ensure that the media finish their work. “This means a lot of things. Since the media arrived in Beijing, their transportation, accommodation and communication equipment need to be guaranteed. When media come to the venue, they need to find jobs, such as photography seats, camera stands, media stands, mixed interview areas and press conferences. In short, the media operation should provide the media with the necessary services and facilities.”
After the baptism of 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and 2014 Nanjing Youth Olympic Games, the word “media operation” has increasingly entered people’s attention. Anthony pointed out that different from the 2008 Summer Olympics, the cold weather of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics will bring new challenges to the media operation.
“From the perspective of media, photography, photography and text reporters all need to deal with very low temperatures. For example, photography and camera reporters had to sit in the ice and snow and shoot alpine skiing events for 5 hours in a row. At that time, the temperature might be as low as minus 20 or 30 degrees Celsius. The reporting environment faced by the media will be very different. The organizing committee should ensure that the media are properly taken care of and the communication conditions of the media should be guaranteed.” He said.
Beijing Winter Olympics has 109 small items. It is a difficult task for a single media to achieve full coverage of the Olympic Games. Especially under the background of the sluggish media industry, many media have reduced the number of Olympic journalists. Contrary to this, in the Internet news era, in order to meet the needs of the audience, the media need to report news from different venues.
Therefore, Olympic information service (OIS) has become an important field of media operation. OIS will provide professional English sports reports and information services to help registered media receive information and achieve the maximum coverage of Olympic reports. Before the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, this service was undertaken by the local organizing committee. For hosts whose mother tongue is not English, it is sometimes difficult to recruit hundreds of native English journalists and run an English news service.
Therefore, under the guidance of the Olympic 2020 agenda, the International Olympic Committee considers providing the organizing committee with an overall solution in areas requiring highly professional Olympic skills. The International Olympic Committee is now responsible for forming the OIS team and taking over the Olympic information service with the help of the organizing committee. The media operation department of the organizing committee will mainly focus on serving registered media, which can greatly reduce costs.
Every registered journalist can receive professional reports from OIS during the Olympic Games. Anthony introduced that OIS would not rob the media, but only help the media provide key information about athletes and competitions. These information media may not have the opportunity to obtain, such as direct quotation, expert comments, key data, real-time updated event information, etc. More importantly, OIS allows the media to cover those competitions that cannot go to the stadium, so that the Olympic Games can be spread more widely.
On January this year, Xinhua News Agency officially became the international news agency recognized by the International Olympic Committee, becoming the only new international news agency recognized by the International Olympic Committee and the first non-European and American international news agency in more than 30 years.
The International Olympic Committee divides world media organizations into two categories: international news agencies with global influence and national/regional news agencies with regional influence. Media organizations recognized as international news agencies have priority in Olympic sports reports, including ensuring sufficient registration quota for Olympic news reports, free priority of the main news center, ensure the position of text and photography interview in the stadium.
What does it mean to become an international news agency recognized by the International Olympic Committee? Anthony said that this was a very important recognition. “Over the past 30 years, the International Olympic Committee has only recognized AFP, AP and Reuters as international news agencies. There are many reasons why the International Olympic Committee has recognized Xinhua News Agency as international news agency, the main reason is that China has become a major country participating in the Olympic Games, and China is one of the largest countries in the world. Xinhua News Agency is one of the largest news agencies in the world, with branches all over the world. Xinhua News Agency not only produces Chinese content for the Chinese market, but also produces multilingual content for the international market. The International Olympic Committee recognized Xinhua News Agency as an international news agency and formed a partnership with Xinhua News Agency, thus helping Xinhua news agency to better report the Olympic movement, the International Olympic Committee, especially the Olympic Games.”