> TO comment on ABC Sports slanted coverage of the final game of the
> Women's World Cup go to: http://www.abcsports.com/ask.asp
> ---------------------------
> New York Times, Sunday July 11, 1999. Section Y, p. 23, col. 1.
> TV Sports / Richard Sandomir
> Just Who Was the United States Playing for the Championship?
>
> Did China matter to ABC Sports at the Women's World Cup yesterday? In
> an international competition in which one team is the United States, it
> is worth analyzing how much attention the network pays to the foreign
> team.
>
> China, aside from being present for the game, was not an ABC priority,
> Sure, China played the United States team to a draw through 120
> minutes. You couldn't miss the Chinese. Makes you wonder what ABC would
> have done if China had won. At least the announcers, J. P. Dellacamera
> and Wendy Gebauer, knew all the Chinese players' names. But the team's
> strategies and personalities were shorted as if the players were
> faceless automatons.
>
> Maybe this is what happens when your scientists are accused of filching
> American nuclear secrets and President Clinton is at the Rose Bowl.
>
> The first sign of the treatment came early. When the game started, ABC
> popped up a chart: "USA Keys to Victory." Fairness dictated that a
> similar list of Chinese keys follow'. It didn't. Did China sneak into
> the final? Were its strengths and weaknesses secret? Had China played
> five previous World Cup games in -a hermetically sealed stadium? The
> 2O-minute pre-game show (with 9 minutes 24 seconds of commercials)
> offered little to help a viewer know the Chinese players (it wasn't so
> hot on the American squad either), which is odd considering the
> telecast should have been tilted toward viewers less knowledgeable
> about soccer. (The halftime show was barren of analysis; imagine a
> Super Bowl halftime without analysis?)
>
> Throughout the game, the United States' players received better
> treatment whenever Dellacamera or Gebauer slipped in personal tidbits.
> (Did the Chinese team refuse to give more than name and rank to the
> tournament's media guide?) With all the crowd reaction shots used by
> ABC, I can't remember a Chinese face. Did the Chinese team have no
> nationalist contingent, no flag-waving fans, not a single one with a
> painted face?
>
> Dellacamera, who seemed so fair in his enthusiasms during United States
> games until yesterday, often sounded more jazzed by the Americans'
> scoring possibilities than by China's. That unfairness emerged most
> dramatically during the decisive penalty kicks that ended with the
> United States victory.
>
> When Kristine Lilly scored to put the United States ahead, 3-2,
> Dellacamera shouted: "The shot. Goal!" When China's Zhang Ouying tied
> it, he said, without a hint of emotion: "Zhang. And she scores." Mia
> Hamm's go-ahead goal was called by Dellacamera with a second shout:
> "Shot. And a goal!"
>
> But Sun Wen's tying goal sounded like a disappointment to Dellacamera.
> "Sun Wen shot and she scores. ~ Yet Brandi Chastain's game-winner was a
> simple, joyful roar: "GOAL!"
>
> After Chastain scored, Dellacamera said nothing for nearly two minutes,
> the right tack. Let the pictures tell the story. But had the Chinese
> left the field? Fallen through a trapdoor? In most post-game
> championship celebrations, television directors instinctively alternate
> shots of deliriously happy winners with those of the disconsolate
> losers. But as the United States team partied on the field, the Chinese
> team might well have jetted off to Beijing. Were they stoic? Were they
> sobbing? Where was their half of the story?
>
> ABC waited five minutes from Chastain's goal ABC to discover the
> Chinese team (for 30 seconds) as it accepted second-place medals.
> Dellacamera and Gebauer's final comments solidified the belief that
> China's players mattered far less than America's. They did not mention
> China. Gebauer, a member of the victorious United States team at the
> 1991 Women's World Cup, said she had to compose herself because she had
> been crying. Jingo bells. All the way.