Journalist's view | Behind the Lens: Chaotic media war at Olympics hurts 'innocents'

While athletes fight for medals in the Olympics, there's also a match in the photography area, which is just a step away. Earlier on, the table tennis mixed doubles team Wang Chuqin/Sun Yingsha won the gold medal. After the match, the photographers rushed into the players' area to capture the celebratory moments and even trampled on Wang's racket.

Robert Capa, a famous war photographer, once said, "If your pictures aren't good enough, you aren't close enough." This is still a golden rule in the photography industry, but this time, for the sake of "close enough," the athletes have unfortunately become the victims.

The accident has not ended yet; the IOC is even poised to find the "real culprit" who stepped on the racket, and in yesterday's table tennis stadium, the pre-match meeting of the photojournalists was also filled with tension. The person in charge of the photo area (photo manager) said that the photojournalists could no longer walk into the players' area, they must strictly follow the designated routes in and out of the stadium, and that if they violated any rules, they would not be allowed to enter the stadium.

The warnings are justified, but the journalists' job is a race against time, where no one wants to capture those athletes' backs. From the perspective of the interview, those cameramen are trying their best to get a good picture and to freeze a fleeting moment. It would be an exaggeration to say that this is the "mission" of a photographer, but this is still the reality of today's photo shooting, and it's impossible to care about anything other than the viewing window.

In fact, it's the same for other journalists, who have to fight for their position in the mixed press area. They always need to capture the deepest feelings of the athletes and the most attractive clips after the competition.

However, no matter how excited and motivated an athlete is, he or she will not have enough emotions after being interviewed by different media a few times. How to get a story out of the interviews is also a test of journalists' skills.

In the Olympics interview scene, chaos can be seen nearly every time. The Olympics is the highest stage for athletes, but it is also the highest stage for sports journalists.

(Journalist: Yasmine Yip; English editor: Darius)

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