PS COLUMN ARCHIVE

February 24, 2010

Weak point of sports coverage

I suppose some of you must have lack of sleep because of watching Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver, Canada. I, too, am watching TV late at night or early in the morning, which disturbs my pace of life for this month. Shortly after the Olympics started, Japan was expected of winning seven or eight medals, but it’s only three as of Feb. 24. My personal impression of watching Japanese athletes who were counted on most likely to win the medals by mass media of Japan is that they duly ended up after all in reasonable ranks below medals, not because of their unexpected happening during the games but because they just deserve it.

As we kept watching their performances on TV, we came to know how optimistic the prediction of Japanese sports writers was. We know now that it was merely a wishful expectation for things go well rather than a cool prediction. I’m very much dissatisfactory that this fact holds true for even major newspapers and TV stations all alike throughout the country.

In accordance with the game regulations of current Olympics, most of the Olympic games are final stages of deciding winners after through preliminary screening like World Cup of any sports that are regionally held for qualification a number of times throughout a year. It is affront to common sense that the athletes who did poor performances constantly in preliminary games would, all of sudden, win the third place or better in the Olympics. Therefore, it must be rather easy for mass media to make a reasonable prediction how many medals could be won by Japanese athletes or teams. I wonder if there are, in this country, no sports writers or broadcasters who have cool and objective observation ability. It seems to me that their prediction was based on too optimistic prospect if higher ranking athletes from the other countries should happen to fail in their performances and then there might come up a chance for Japanese athletes to move up in medal rankings in the rare case of their unthinkable fine performances. I agree to mass media’s becoming supporters for Japanese athletes of particular sports event to arouse people’s interests, but they should not limit themselves to that purpose only, because it is so apparent for expectation going to turn out disappointment. This kind of mass media’s attitude will work negative for promoting winter sports. It is desirable for media reporters to write an honest article that Japanese athletes will be difficult to win high standing ranks because they are technically inferior in various points to superb foreign athletes. Not just “Good luck! Hang in there Japan!” but it will be, I think, much more useful for Japan to give articles to objectively introduce in details high quality techniques of the first class foreign athletes.

This could not be said of only sports world; it will be equally important from global standpoint to introduce high standard of Japanese technology worldwide in the fields of science and technology. It is hardly possible to become world No. 1 by only hard working and spiritual efforts. Deliberate planning, careful preparations, excellent human resources and appropriate budget are the necessities to accomplish the top achievement of the world. What’s required of media reporters are to provide readers with such background information behind the door.

(Translated by The Planetary Society of Japan)

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