Wednesday evening, prior to Olympic gold-medalist Shaun White's halfpipe final performance in Vancouver, NBC may have been covering the event a bit TOO closely.
White, the automatic winner of the event before he commenced his run, exchanged some vulgar sentiments with his coach Bud Keene which were picked up by NBC cameras and aired live to the East Coast audience. After several choice expletives were shared with millions of viewers, NBC announcers Pat Parnell and Todd Richards apologized for the athlete and the coach's language, defending their behavior and attributing it to the energy running through White and Keene.
I think that NBC made an in-the-moment decision which could have been better handled. Yes, apologizing was necessary, but they were apologizing for the wrong people. It is not their place to excuse the language of two adult men who couldn't be reasonably expected to be aware of a camera and a boom mike in their faces in a moment like that! Though the expletives would only be clearly audible to people with keen hearing, is it the responsibility of the athletes and coaches to censor their speech in non-interview conversation to prevent this from happening? Or should NBC have anticipated the intimate conversation may not have been G-rated (considering the circumstances) and refrained from tapping in to it? Or at the very least apologize for showing it in the first place....
ev
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