Welcome to Beijing Olympics II: Hostage Video Boogaloo. Whatever Dutch journalist Sjoerd den Daas tried to tell his NOS audience, it got China’s security officials worried enough to pull him off camera in the middle of a live shot:
Onze correspondent @sjoerddendaas werd om 12.00u live in het NOS Journaal door beveiligers voor de camera weggetrokken. Helaas is dit steeds vaker de dagelijkse realiteit voor journalisten in China. Hij is in orde en kon zijn verhaal gelukkig een paar minuten later afmaken pic.twitter.com/GLTZRlZV96
— NOS (@NOS) February 4, 2022
Mediaite doesn’t explain what den Daas was trying to say, but apparently he was allowed to finish his sentence shortly afterward:
“Our correspondent @sjoerddendaas was pulled away from the camera by security guards at 12:00 pm live in the NOS Journaal. Unfortunately, this is increasingly becoming a daily reality for journalists in China. He is fine and was able to finish his story a few minutes later,” tweeted NOS on Friday.
It’s a daily reality for everyone in China, not just journalists. The daily reality for Uighurs in China is a lot worse than that, of course. But all of that prompts the question of why any media outlets are bothering to cover these grotesque, propaganda-platform Olympics at all. Perhaps this episode from NOS is worthwhile just to give everyone a reminder why the IOC is garbage, and why any Western cooperators — dare I say collaborators? — should be publicly shamed for their decision.
The worst of these is clearly NBC, which didn’t learn a thing from its execrable Sochi coverage eight years ago. Here’s NBC today at the opening ceremony, acting as a mouthpiece for Chinese Communists just like they did with Russian Communists in 2014. Collaborators is the correct word in this instance.
NBC just casually working as a mouthpiece to push Chinese Communist propaganda. pic.twitter.com/8M45pyaTKN
— Kassy Dillon (@KassyDillon) February 4, 2022
Shameful. Simply shameful.
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