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Occupy NBC’s Olympic Coverage

Occupy NBC’s Olympic Coverage

NBC has not made many friends with its American coverage of the Olympics, and Twitter has been the bullhorn of protest for hundreds of thousands of people who feel like the network has sacrificed quality reporting in favor of maximizing corporate revenues. But the recent suspension of Guy Adams from Twitter, an independent British journalist who has really gone to town on NBC via Twitter (For example: “I have 1000 channels on my TV. Not one will be showing the Olympics opening ceremony live. Because NBC are utter, utter [censored].”) has landed NBC in particularly hot water, and brought accusations that NBC and Twitter are involved in some sort of conspiracy to keep Olympic coverage criticism off of the Internet. Reportedly, Adams’ account was suspended for tweeting, “The man responsible for NBC pretending the Olympics haven’t started yet is Gary Zenkel,” referring to NBC’s six-hour delay of the Opening Ceremonies. “Tell him what u think!” he continued, along with a posted work email address for Zenkel, NBC’s chief executive in charge of Olympic coverage. Twitter says posting someone else’s personal contact info is a violation of its rules, and suspended Adams’ account. Adams says that he didn’t post any personal contact information, just a work email address that anyone could find on NBC’s website, and he is far from the only one to point out that Twitter and NBC just entered into a corporate relationship that made Twitter the official narrator of the Olympics. Which does seem a bit fishy, but no fishier than tweeting somebody’s email address and encouraging followers to flood them with angry complaints. So, obviously, the whole thing is a real he tweeted/she tweeted mess in which nobody is looking particularly innocent. There you have it; the scandal that will rock our generation. In any case, if Twitter and NBC are trying to stifle negative criticism of their coverage, this isn’t helping …

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