Torch Relay Controversy
As the CTV-Rogers Olympic consortium won the broadcast rights to the 2010 Winter Olympics, Stephen Brunt became a central journalist leading up to and during the games. A minor controversy arose when it was announced that Brunt would be carrying the Olympic torch in Newfoundland. Brunt was initially singled out by the Toronto Sun and by the Toronto Star as being unethical as a journalist for carrying the torch. When confronted by the question of integrity and ethics of the relay on Primetime Sports, the conversation unfolded as follows:
Brunt “This is a commercial endeavor. The torch relay, God love it, which is going to make people tear up and is a lovely thing, and a way of including people in the Olympic process, is sponsored. And it is corporate and underwritten. And spots were sold as part of the sponsorship package... This is all part of the machinery of the Olympic Games.”
- “You don’t see an ethics problem?” asked Bob McCown.
- “No,” Brunt said, “because nobody is telling me what to say or what to do.”
The issue quickly subsided as it became clear a wide variety of people were to carry the torch, including 25 other journalists from the Olympic Consortium.
Read more about this topic: Stephen Brunt, 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics
Famous quotes containing the words torch and/or controversy:
“They shall beget and rear children, handing on the torch of life from one generation to another.”
—Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)