News Web Sites & Olympic Reporting

Ok, I understand that everyone wants to be the first to report a breaking story with all the details but two days in a row, my Olympic watching evenings were missing some of the thrill. I can thank the Baltimore Sun for that, the front page of their website headlined, “Phelps Wins Gold!”. I visit the Sun’s website often as I do other news sites like CNN. CNN does not indicate any results on its front page, if you want to know who won, you will have to click the link to the story. I think CNN reports the news responsibly, while the Sun is not. I want to watch the races, root for the USA, and hold my breath for the last few strokes or steps to see who wins it.

How about Paul Hamm on the USA men’s gymnastic team? One of the events that I didn’t see the results before it aired on NBC was the men’s individual all around gymnastics event. After he fell into the judge’s arms on the vault, I figured it was over for the US team and since it was late, I decided to just go to sleep. The next morning, I was reading up on the results from the day before and to my surprise, he won. His last two events must have been near perfect and some of the other competitors must have made some big mistakes.

My son, Andrew, loves to swim, and his favorite events are the swimming events. He is here with me tonight so that he can be in the wedding tomorrow, and he immediately gravitated toward the TV when the swimming was on. He would turn and sign, “swimming, swimming, swimming”. He gets so excited; you can really tell that he likes watching it.