The world heard JD Vance being booed at the Olympics. Except for viewers in USA | Hacker News Reader

The world heard JD Vance being booed at the Olympics. Except for viewers in USA

theguardian.com

280 pointstreetalker110 comments

> The real risk for American broadcasters is not that dissent will be visible. It is that audiences will start assuming anything they do not show is being hidden

Kinda daft not to assume this has been the case for a long time already

The opening ceremony for the London 2012 Olympics included a celebration of the National Health Service, which got mysteriously cut from the broadcast in the US, at a time when there was a bunch of fuss over Obamacare that had come into effect a year or two before.

Was hard not to imagine that was a deliberate choice.

Drug companies and insurers are big advertisers.

That's insane.

look at the Fortune 500, and notice how many of them are top 10, or top 50

many of the US' problems can be figured out simply by looking at this list

Well the "no censorship!"-crowd in rhe US has been strangly focused on the censorship of racists, bigots and nazis. I don't think they consider censorship that benefits the Neo-feudalist lords as censorship.

The naive part of me these past years was thinking that calling out contradictions would bring shame and reflection to these people.

It's still important to call them out for all the onlookers, but he goal in suc discussions should not be to try and convince the other party in these cases. They at best don't care and are going all on vibes, and at worst knowingly contradict because their goal is also onlookers.

Even if a large conspiracy isn't involved, I believe that biases in worldview can contribute to these effects. However, I still think it's important to inform people of things they might be missing and hold media accountable for their choices, regardless of whether those choices are random or unknowingly biasedWe need to be careful not to fall into the allure of "fake media" in our outrage, as this could ultimately benefit populists in the long run.

They might have just thought it a bit boring?

You can check it out - the first couple of minutes here of people in nurse costumes standing by beds and moving around a bit. Not really must see stuff. https://youtu.be/ReJjvlipXpM

I’m in the US and I saw it and recall thinking it was a strange thing to specifically celebrate in the Olympic opening ceremonies.

But to each their own.

Look again at the insurmountable hill that is the US's potential transition to a fully public healthcare system, and consider that celebrating having done that elsewhere might be valid.

Strange hill to celebrate climbing if the peak is a healthcare system widely regarded both inside and outside the UK as mediocre at best.

Could be worse, at least they don't have to choose between financial ruin or a healthy life.

The NHS is the UK's one and only True and Universal Religion, and it's quintessentially british, like Mr Bean, crumpets and the queen.

Not celebrating the NHS during the London Olympics opening is akin to blasphemy.

Maybe it was cut for some international broadcasts because not everyone will understand.

> audiences will start assuming anything they do not show is being hidden

Will they? Possibly a portion of them, but I doubt they'll be the majority.

I’m a viewer in the USA and I heard the boos. They didn’t sound edited out. What did I do wrong?

You aren’t one of the few Americans who watched the opening ceremony on over the air NBC.

You make it sound like NBC is some sort of obscure specialist service, but it turns out that they're actually a mainstream national broadcaster, available not just over the air but also on just about every satellite, cable, and streaming provider in the country: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBC

Not only that, but they're the official Olympic broadcaster in the USA! Around 22m watched it on their broadcast services, and a further 3m on streaming.

In reality, an overwhelming majority of Americans watching the opening ceremony were doing so via NBC.

The opening ceremony in real time? I’d be surprised if they have double digit viewership numbers, let alone “most Americans”.

You're surprised sports in America has high viewership? Yes, the #1 reason people still have cables these days is for athletics.

You obviously don’t understand the role of sports in American culture. Or how the major television networks operate.

Sports events sure, opening ceremony? They are just going to get highlights on YouTube mostly.

This is making a remarkable assumption about a vast population. I know everybody in my family watched the opening ceremony on TV. Are you just making guesses?

According to the weekend ratings, 21.4 million Americans watched the opening ceremony on NBC directly.

NBC alone had over 20 million opening ceremony viewers this year (TV + Peacock streams)[0]. TV is a huge huge part of US culture. See also the Super Bowl, which just happened today.

So maybe not most, but a lot.

[0] https://www.cbs19news.com/entertainment/olympics-opening-cer...

Dude just about all Americans watch the Olympics on normal network TV, in this case NBC. What are you talking about?

Over the air? I was surprised to find out stations still broadcast over the air.

Just because it’s network television doesn’t mean it’s over the air. Cable television also carries the networks.

Who under 40 or 50 has cable anymore?

Under 40, about 25%. Overall, about half of Americans still have cable television, we’re talking hundreds of millions of people.

I honestly think the way they mix their audio is so the stadium noise gets turned down whenever the announcer talks and the American announcers just never shut the fuck up no matter how inane they might be.

I'll have to ask my brother but that might be NBC's audio engineer decision, or even his default settings (depending on the broadcaster voice).

I'm as critical as the US as they come, in fact I just cancelled my summer trip to the Appalachia, but seeing this as censorship is reading a bit too far, simpler explanations exist (crowd noises are dimmed by audio filters)

Someone in the US says they heard it. Another watching Eurosport said they didn't.

Who to believe?

Germany here - I also could not hear it. I was wandering though that there was no reaction from the crowd. So that explains it.

Both? It is very likely the 'booh' were cut by the broadcaster filters. Each broadcaster (at least in my country) has a 'sound identity' (it's a literal translation, sorry) and use filters during live shows. It originally come from AM radio where your sound is _very_ compressed, to FM radio where you still have to compress it, but with more range. My state radio would have captured and diffused the 'booh' while on the music radio I used to listen to as a kid, they definitely would have been dampened (most of them would have been caught by the 'passe-haut/coupe-bas').

I listened to the US broadcast, definitely dampened, I'm not sure if it's a default filter or one that triggers with the broadcaster, it is extremely likely it isn't intentional. My Bayesian ass is 95% sure.

https://archive.ph/s7XuC

my question is more technical: how did the blot out the booing? and: how live was it in the US? from the Academy Awards we know that they have a 5s delay (following the Michael Moore incident), but what is it with olympics broadcast?

While they do show it live, it's in the middle of the workday, so almost everyone in the USA will have watched it delayed by many hours at "prime time", aka around 8pm local time in each zone.

That being said, I'm in the US and I heard boos on the delayed broadcast.

as I unterstand the boos were blotted out only on the NBC broadcast, did you watch it on NBC?

Oddly I watched it live on the Eurosport broadcast and didn’t hear any noticeable booing

Just checked what Moore has done and found that quote of him (about Bush):

> “we live in fictitious times with a fictitious president”

it was 2003, but oh, dear Michael, if only you knew what the future would be like...

it was his Oscar for Bowling for Columbine

The audio engineers are monitoring multiple mics (for an event of this magnitude probably dozens) and increasing or decreasing volume on them in real time for the mix that goes on the air. Standard for any sports broadcast.

> my question is more technical: how did the blot out the booing?

Filtering out boos doesn't seem to be an issue from a technical standpoint. It was done recently with Donald Trump at the US Open Tennis:

https://bimcmedia.com/booing-trump-at-the-us-open-tv-audienc...

"The USTA’s decision to comply with the White House’s wishes and shield Trump’s self-presentation from noise is hardly understandable. The British Guardian called it in tennis jargon an “unforced error” – a fault without necessity. The US Open are actually the Grand Slam tournament that cares least about etiquette."

How very DPRK of them.

very American thing happens in America - "Wow, this is like those other bad countries!"

People from the US are totally unaware that their leaders are unpopular abroad! If only traditional media didn't have such a stranglehold on the US population The people would know they would...

I fail to see the point of pushing this narrative. Has braindrain taken all of Europe good writers? Meanwhile China and America still take all the medals. All France can do is pick the games so Marchand gets the most golds, so much for collectivism.

Oh and Marchand swims for UT Austin BTW. An American school, training under an American coach with American infrastructure.

Looks like Americans are adopting Chinese censorship methods. You won't see it thus it never happened.

This website is one of the biggest culprits

No kidding

Care to elaborate?

I have showdead set to yes, and while so some articles get a gray color and an occasional [flagged] tag, everything is still searchable[0]. The only form of censorship is the ordering in the news list, but I could pick any other list[1] if I wanted to.

[0]: https://hn.algolia.com/

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/lists

This thread will immediately disappear off the front page once some Americans wake up.

FYI [flagged] articles are still present on the front[0] list. I'd suggest you check out the active[1] or the newest[2] list instead.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/front

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/active

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newest

And how many people do you think use these 3 lnks compared to the base URL? That's the clever little ways to censor. You don't need everyone to be unaware, just as many as possible.

That's why I tend to search top in the last day and week. Specifically to catch flagged articles like this, since at least the votes don't get undone.

Please, the topic in question is whether HN "is one of the biggest culprits" in "adopting Chinese censorship methods". Granted, I'm far from being knowledgeable in Chinese censorship methods, but I doubt they can be circumvented by just using different URIs.

I don't agree with that because HN is a relatively small site. But the methods used here aren't dissimilar to what is happening in this story nor in China. Burying stories is a big part of censorship while minimizing dissent.

There we go, it is flagged.

People flag stuff. I don't think it results in removal automatically though it probably downgrades it as a story.

Some may regard this as off topic, but censorship seems to be a recurring subject and regularly discussed.

Yes. When it is complaint about some leftist student protesting and thus interfering with far right speaker free speech rigth to never be opposed, regualarly discussed. Rarely flagged.

But, when there is something making current admin or far right lool bad, flagged quickly

Not sure if HN monitors brigading.

...so what? "Most stories about politics" are considered Off-Topic, as per the guidelines[0], and some members favor the flag- over the hide-button more than I'd like. It's still on place 19 on the active list[1], and a far cry from any practiced censorship like on Reddit, where stuff just gets [deleted] out of existence.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/active

And Stalinist tactics in removing and erasing memorials and documents that contains subjects they don't like, e.g.,

  * https://www.splcenter.org/resources/hatewatch/attacks-history-timeline-trump-administration/
  * https://abcnews.go.com/US/trump-admin-removes-memorial-honoring-people-enslaved-george/story?id=129472615
  * https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-trump-administration-is-erasing-american-history-told-by-public-lands-and-waters/

And so on...

trumpism

So North Korea, China, America, Russia and basically all other countries have propaganda, and Europe doesn’t? I live in Europe and think we do. Not everything that is in the news is true.

Europe doesn’t bill itself as “the land of the free” and doesn’t proudly tout itself as having free speech above all else no matter the cost. So famously fascist symbols - like the swastika/hakenkreuz among other things - are banned a few places, it may be controversial but it’s not a dirty little secret or anything like that

Updated comment to make argument clearer

Your argument is no clearer. Someone's claiming US is beginning to resemble China in that they hide criticism of the ruling parties - they have not mentioned Europe once and you're saying ... something about censorship in Europe?

This reminds me of my Dutch friend who is prone to exaggeration to make things sound dramatic and scary to outsiders, and frequently claims the Netherlands is a "narco state" - big "Nederlandse hiphop: Ik kom van de straat" energy going on here.

> This reminds me of my Dutch friend who is prone to exaggeration to make things sound dramatic and scary to outsiders, and frequently claims the Netherlands is a "narco state" - big "Nederlandse hiphop: Ik kom van de straat" energy going on here.

Well I think there is definitely WAY too much drugs here. Definitely not as bad as California, but I've lived in Eindhoven for a while and people could just put their car window open a bit and text a certain number and get it delivered to their car! Also I've met plenty of students who took XTC during parties and thought it was all fine. When I said something about it they called me a "moral knight". Guess I'm old fashion.

"Your head is on fire!"

"So other heads are also flamable. Do you think your head isn't?"

Something potentially happening elsewhere doesn't invalidate it being pointed out. In fact if Von der Leyen got booed in China and a Geeman broadcaster muted it, I would also like to know what was ommited.

Whataboutism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

These american news companies are so goddamn spineless.

money is on the line

Short term gain for long term loss

Short term gain of money in exchange for for short term loss of democracy.

Wouldn't show that create vitality and more money? Or it's more of fear, I think the spineless adjective stands

Hey guess what forum flagged this story.

Some USA (and western) viewers even believe that Putin can't speak, because they never saw him speaking.

Weird, I remember Western media ran full transcripts of his speech after the Ukraine invasion and every other time he crawled out of his bunker in the Urals. Would you like to enlighten us which important viewpoints of Putin get censored in the West?

Organic lie generating machine not given airtime shocker...

If you are expecting leaders of countries and media to be truth-telling machines, sure, you are in shocker. Stay tuned to your truth machines.

Citation needed.. really sorry to say it because there are plenty of things to say about the current US administration.

It feels like people inventing this story, farming for followers on socials by manufacturing outrage. And a close read of the article will uncover that it was denied by the networks.

This needs a deeper dig before opinions be formed - especially given the vehement denials of manipulation by the broadcasters.

But until then, citation needed.

People in the US heard the boos, as evidenced by the comments and others posting about it. All politicians get booed. But how many? And who controls the mics? The editing? The news press?

More anti-American propaganda on HN. Why does this keep happening? This is not news, nor is it relevant for HN.

Hackers care about the truth. I don't think many here would consider the censorship of a US head of state being inherently pro-US (or the criticism of said censorship to be anti-US).

But feel free to elaborate why you feel wanting the US population to be able to see how their political leadership is perceived elsewhere is "anti-US" — cause I would describe it as the exact opposite.

Americans - and citizens of all big countries - know their leadership isn't popular everywhere, especially when other governments disagree with them on increasingly more issues (UK and French censorship of speech being one of them, ironically).

Seeing the 100th "U.S. government bad - please believe us this time" story from yet another activist-masquerading-as-journalist post from The Guardian (UK) ending up on the same website where technologists discuss innovations in tech and science is the real travesty here.

It is unusual to be booed at olympic.

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