It’s been a long time coming, but finally the International Olympic Committee has given competing athletes and their support staff the opportunity to blog during the Beijing Olympic Games.
In July last year, the IOC stated that, while “blogging is a legitimate form of personal expression available to all athletes” it was available “at all times except during the Games”.
Their new position is far more lenient, though there are restrictions in place which are designed to protect other athletes, and the paid-for rights of sponsors.
“The IOC considers blogging… as a legitimate form of personal expression and not a form of journalism,” the IOC said (we can argue about that at another time). “It is required that, when accredited persons at the Games post any Olympic content, it be confined solely to their own personal Olympic-related experience.”
Basically, bloggers can talk about their own personal Olympic journey, but they can’t talk about sensitive issues relating to other people, and presumably other situations, and nor can they use multimedia which might infringe on the media outlets who’ve paid a lot of money for the right to report and broadcast. That’s going to be an interesting one to police, particularly as there doesn’t appear to be a requirement to register these blogs.
Let’s hope the IOC is good at using Technorati.
For more Olympic resources, read Lorelle’s excellent feature on Blogging the Olympic Games
