08.29.08
Criticism Still Rages over NBC’s Perceived Snub of Gay Diver Matthew Mitcham
NBC has apologized for what looked like a refusal to report fully on openly gay Australian diver Matthew Mitcham’s astonishing upset victory over the heavily favored Chinese team, taking the gold medal and garnering the highest score in Olympics history for his event.
NBC, which had offered extensive coverage on the personal lives of a number of other athletes, did not acknowledge the presence of Mitcham’s partner, Lachlan, whom Mitcham had brought to Beijing with the help of a program underwritten Johnson & Johnson to allow athletes to bring family members along.
More dramatic still was the back-story of a young athlete who had suffered depression over his sexual status to the point of nearly quitting, before making a comeback that took him all the way to the gold medal–and who came out of the closet publicly along the way, making him the first Australian athlete to do so and conferring upon Mitcham the distinction of being one of only ten, out of over 10,000 athletes competing in the 2008 Summer Olympics, to go to Beijing as an openly gay athlete; moreover, of those ten courageous people, Mitcham is the only man.
For gay and lesbian viewers, who were solidly invested in Mitcham’s performance and thrilled with his triumph, the result of four perfect dives, the lack of coverage regarding Mitcham was an insult. It also smacked of censorship.
When the GLBT media erupted in protest over the network’s silence regarding Mitcham’s personal life and the role it played in his victory, NBC made its apologies.
In a Gaywired article from Aug. 28 it was reported that NBC Olympics president Gary Zenkel had stated to GLBT publication AfterElton, “We regret that we missed the opportunity to tell Matthew Mitcham’s story. We apologize for this unintentional omission.”
That same article reported that when AfterElton editor Michael Jensen asked Greg Hughes, spokesperson for NBC Sports, about the issue of censorship which some GLBT viewers had begun talking about, Jensen was told by Hughes, “[W]e don’t discuss an athlete’s sexual orientation.”
Except, pointed out The Advocate.com in an Aug. 28 article, the sexual orientations of the athletes upon whom the network lavished coverage were implicit to the stories of married athletes, tortured love affairs, and the like.
And while the partners and spouses of straight athletes were discussed, Lachlan was never mentioned.
Moreover, once NBC reported the basic facts of Mitcham’s victory, Mitcham himself barely got a mention again.
Coming out of the closet was part and parcel of Mitcham’s overall story, from embracing his true identity as both an athlete and a gay man, to arranging for the funds for Lachlan to accompany him to the Games.
“However, the higher ups at NBC Sports decided that all these bits of information were not ready for prime time,” wrote Moylan, who went on to note that, “the omission shows a sore lack of sound news judgment.”
Moylan added that, “you could argue that his sexual orientation has nothing to do with the competition, but, then again, neither does what Michael Phelps eats for breakfast, that divers David Boudia and Thomas Finchum are roommates, or that the decathlon prepared Bryan Clay for being a father, all of which were mentioned more than once.”
The view from the heterosexual sports writers’ world is a bit different, at least at the blog The Big Lead which took a Mitcham quote from the Australian newspaper the Herald Sun (”I just want to be known as the Australian diver who did really well at the Olympics. It’s everybody else who thinks it’s special when homosexuality and elite sport go together”) as evidence that Mitcham would rather not have had his sexuality discussed on air.
An article declared that to the athlete for whom being gay and coming out had involved a personal and professional crisis that other media indicated was so profound that Mitcham contemplated quitting, being gay was “no big deal.”
For many GLBT viewers and journalists, however, the incident rankles, and NBC’s apology is, as The Advocate.com had it, a case of “too little, too late.”