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Loading ...NBC on not mentioning Mitcham is gay: “We can’t cover everything”
Burnt out and struggling with depression and anxiety, an up-and-coming Olympic hopeful drops out of his sport two years before the Beijing Games. His coach talks him into resuming training the year before the Olympics and he makes his country’s team which isn’t expected to fare terribly well against China’s powerhouse squad.
Indeed, the athlete performs poorly in his first event, failing to even make the semifinals. In his final event, however, and on his final attempt, he wins in an upset that not only denies China the gold medal, but by winning prevents a gold medal sweep by China in all eight of that sports events.
Now add to that the fact that the athlete also happens to have come out as gay less than six months earlier and is the only out gay male athlete at the games.
As if that isn’t significant enough, his victory is easily the highest profile win ever by a gay man in an Olympic event. Both his mother and partner are in the stands to witness his triumph, something they almost didn’t get to do until a grant from Johnson & Johnson financed their trip to Beijing.
Finally, after receiving his gold medal, he climbs into the stands ala tennis’ Patrick Rafter to kiss and hug his partner.
One couldn’t write a better script. Surely, that is an Olympic story that must be told, right? Not according to NBC.
The athlete in question is, of course, Australia’s Matthew Mitcham who snagged the gold medal in the Men’s 10 Platform Diving and did so on his final dive by posting the highest score ever given to a single dive during Olympic competition.
Curious why Matthew’s award ceremony and story weren’t gripping enough to make the NBC telecast (the medal ceremony was shown on their website) AfterElton.com spoke with Greg Hughes a spokesman for NBC Sports.
While the issue has been addressed and debated by various blogs and writers, until we contacted NBC they were unaware of the controversy. “I’m not aware of any controversy,” said Hughes. “Yours is the first call.”
When asked why at no point during the coverage did NBC mention Mitcham was gay or that his partner was in the stands, Hughes said, “In virtually every case, we don’t discuss an athlete’s sexual orientation.”
When it was pointed out that in fact the network does exactly that by telling viewers about Olympic athletes’ various spouses, boyfriends, girlfriends, and even in one case a heterosexual “love triangle” Hughes responded, “Not in every case. Not every athlete has a personal discussion. I could show you 500 athletes we didn’t show. We don’t show everyone. We don’t show every ceremony.”
But surely, taking into account Mticham’s stunning come-from-behind victory, the historical significance of his achievement as a gay man, and his own personal history, it seems unlikely the vast majority of those other athletes truly have as compelling a story as Mitcham. Said Hughes, “How do you know that? How do you know that someone on the rowing team doesn’t have as compelling a story?”
Usain Bolt, Luxin Zhou, Sanya Richards
Pressed that it was hard to believe that there truly any other athletes with stories as compelling as Matthew’s, especially ones who single-handedly prevented the Chinese from sweeping all of the gold medals in an entire sport, Hughes would only say, “It’s not possible to cover the entire personal story of every athlete regarding their performance. … It’s just not possible to single out coverage. “
After that, Hughes offered no further comment.
Anyone watching NBC’s coverage of the Beijing Olympics is aware how much time the network devoted to many athlete’s personal stories: Michael Phelp’s record setting eight Olympic gold medals and his relationship with his mother, Usain Bolt’s gold medals and world records, and even Sanya Richard’s relationship with her fiancée who plays for the New York Giants.
THIS network always passes by REAL LIFE gay content and reality series. PLEASE we had to sit thru mistys husband, kerrys husband, even their dang wedding bands……. This to me is very homophobic. I had to hear about which runner was married to who….. VERY insulting of nbc.
I am going against the grain according to the comments posted. My man and I watched just about all of the coverage both during the day and “Live” in the evening. We have long enjoyed the games and look forward to them every 4 years. We were able to watch during the day because Phil is currently a victim of our great economics and I am a disabled man on SSI and medicaid. I have only one leg and am confined to home. For me to watch these talented kids of all nations makes me proud of them. I don’t care if they are gay or whatever.
These kids are so athletically gifted and to me they deserve only our true support and affectiion. As for NBC’s lack of informing all viewers about Matthew, what point would it make other than to start tongues wagging. Iwish we did live in a world where it wouldn’t matter, but we all know the truth. I am disappointed though. Bob Costas has always appeared to be a very nice man and I’m sure he could have had a few nice things to say about gay athletes. He was probably only following a script written for and approved by the executives of NBC. Unless pressed on the issue by the media’s we’ll not hear an answer to this question. Phil and I look forward to the games in Vancouver and London with baited breath. Take care all and Peace. That’s what Olympics are for, respectful and friendly competition among all people.
Trace is pretty close to the mark as far as I’m concerned. NBC has amazing coverage given the scope of the games. Of course, only a small part could be shown on prime time network tv, and most of that focused on the sports that American prime time audiences want to watch – particularly sports where US athletes were expected to medal. There was a whole lot of other stuff, but you had to check the website or watch the secondary channels at off hours.
In the coverage of the 10m diving finals, the focus was on the two Americans’ hopes for a medal plus the Chinese quest for a sweep. Matt Mitcham was in the mix, but never the focus until the very last two dives in the sixth and final round of dives. At that point, everyone was astonished at the virtuosity of Matt’s performance (for which the commentators gave him full credit), incredulous that the Chinese had failed to sweep, and moved by Matt’s heartfelt emotional response.
Do I wish that they had mentioned that this extraordinary, talented, gorgeous young champion is gay, if only by showing a quick shot of his partner Lachlan in the stands and mentioning the value of their relationship to Matt? Absolutely, unequivocally YES. Do I think that the failure to do so was homophobic, mean spirited or even grossly negligent? No. The guy is not American, he was not expected to win the gold (if any medal at all). There is really no reason the NBC staff would have prepared a feature about him or scouted out his family and prepped the camera operators to locate them.
The whole controversy seems to me to be a function of our narrow American focus on American sports and American and a certain self-absorption in the gay community.
That said, I’m now a devoted Matthew Mitcham fan. I say celebrate the guy’s extraordinary triumph – watch the video clips on Outsports, but also go to the NBC Olympic website, click on ‘Diving,’ and check out the videos. There’s hi-quality coverage of the 10m finals (including the dives of a couple of US divers who are also worth watching!) and also the medal ceremony (with many minutes of MM’s beaming smile, as well as his climb into the stands to kiss his mother and Lachlan). I get tears, chills and an incredible high every time I watch.
For the most part NBC did a decent job in their Olympics coverage but I was far from being impressed. Living in L.A. my blood boiled every time they mentioned that an event was “Live”. It’s a downright lie. Except for the basketball gold medal game, the “Live” events were 3 hours old. Another obvious lie that the article pointed was that they “don’t discuss an athlete’s sexual orientation”. They flaunted the heterosexual athletes’ orientation at every chance they had. Makes you wonder what other lies they may have told.
NBC commentators also failed to correctly pronounce Beijing, by saying bay “zhing” rather than “jing” as pointed out by PBS commentators. Matthew truly has a compelling, historic, and newsworthy personal story. Congratulations Matthew! Shame on NBC for totally ignoring it.
We know that everything is filtered/focused through the heterosexual dominant paradigm; this is not surprising. I don’t think they are homophobic as much as they don’t want to offend their diverse constituencies/markets in the wider sports arena; the pocketbook trumps all other considerations.
I agree that NBC had poor coverage over all. In my opinion there were too many hours upon hours of commentators and covering ’sports’ such as power walking/running, and other such nonsense sports (just my opinion)… however there were many, many profiles of non-gay athletes that were played over and over again.
Just goes to show you we have a long ways to go in the fight for equality.
I wonder if NBC would have said anything if he won for the USA?
Anyway, congrats to the cutie Mitcham.
I suspect that NBC was quite aware of Mitcham’s story. However, publicizing his sexual orientation (or even portraying it neutrally/naturally) upon his upset victory would have caused a grave “loss of face” to NBC’s hosts.
That’s BS Trace. NBC coverage was adequate at best. How much of the “Field” events in Track and Field were you able to actually view? What was televised? High Jump? Broad Jump? Pole Vault? We got updates of who won medals in 3 minute segments. Pathetic. Of course NBC DID devote a whole channel to that paragon of summer olympics…boxing.
wasn’t that special? Even the great matches were hardly seen. How many times did they begin coverage of an event halfway through a match?
Finally, YES, it is pathetic that NBC is so scared of the gay question that they wouldn’t even mention it on air. NBC, see ya…wouldn’t wanna be ya.
I have read this story with obvious disappointment towards NBC, and unfortunately I cannot buy NBC’s lame excuse for their obvious slap in the face to the Gay Community. I also agree, shamefully, with Bruce’s comment that no attention was paid either by our own CBC in Canada to this incredible man’s story. It seems however that they can flaunt some love triangle or some gal losing her wedding ring, as if we don’t get enough of that on daily TV or Jerry Springer, but when it comes down to a real human interest story such as this, it is conveniently looked over. This man faced incredible odds to get to the Olympics in the first place – he almost dropped out completely were it not for the encouragement of his coach – he basically had one year to train in addition to doing whatever he could to get his mom and partner to the games – and for NBC and CBC this is not good enough. Give me a break, guys, this is out and out discrimination no matter how you try and colour it. This is not your typical “soap opera heterosexual type story” so it just does not rate. Matthew Mitcham deserves his place, for you to turn your back on his achievements, you have turned your back on a very important segment of your viewers.
No, Trace, what is truly unfortunate, is that, after the fact, instead of an “Oops — that was an interesting story–sorry we missed it,” the response is the ridiculous denial that they don’t cover athlete’s sexuality. Athlete’s sexuality was rampant in their coverage as long as it was hetero. I can understand that in such a huge undertaking smaller news-stories like this could be missed, but to excuse it like this exposes the total lack of perspective of NBC Sports and stinks of homophobia. Mitcham deserves our congratulations and he also deserves his privacy, but his ability to be so casual about exposing his sexuality was fought for and won by the many who struggled before him. The community deserves a part in the victory as well. For NBC Sports to miss that perspective is shameful.
Trace, it’s simple, NBC covered the spouses and family other other athletes, and yet they failed to do the same thing to a gold metal winner. There’s a problem in that whether you like to believe it or not.
NBC did a very good job with it’s coverage.
It boggles my mind that anyone could find any fault in such a massive undertaking.
It’s unfortunate that some are trying to politicize such a wonderful accomplishment. I’ve said it before, Congratulations Matthew!
Unfortunately NBC wasn’t the only network that didn’t provide any such back ground on this diver’s amazing achievement. I watched most of CBC’s Olympic coverage and they totally missed this story as well, which was quite surprising.Kudos to Matthew Mitcham for such a stunning achievement!