Words wound in Rio

Broadcast blunders keep reminding us of the perils of live television, writes Scott Stinson.

The most puzzling part of CBC broadcaster Byron MacDonald’s on-air gaffe on Wednesday night remains the actual words.

In saying that a teenage Chinese swimmer “went out like stink, died like a pig,” MacDonald may well have been the first person to ever utter those clauses in succession, let alone do so as part of a live television broadcast. Bad time to get inventive.

That it made it to air — the CBC says he didn’t realize he was live — isn’t that surprising, since the hot microphone has tripped up many a broadcaster over the years.

And besides, with the Rio Games still just a few days old, there have already been several phrases uttered on air by broadcast professionals that have either been followed by apologies or clarifications or some combination of the two. And these were from people who knew they were on-air.

NBC has made a cottage industry of the gaffe, calling gymnast Simone Biles’s adoptive parents “her grandfather and his wife,” referring to a lesbian athlete’s wife as “her husband” and describing a medallist swimmer’s coach (and husband) as “the man responsible” for her swift rise in performance.

It has been an excellent reminder that broadcasting live television — and particularly sports, where there is no script for the action to follow — has no safety net. Despite the advent of high-definition broadcasts and spidercams and super-slo-motion and all manner of such technological goodies, it’s still just someone speaking into a live microphone with no filter and no delete button.

Non-broadcasters have had to learn this lesson first-hand in the past decade, as social media has given everyone the opportunity to say something off the cuff that they might later regret. Journalists, who formerly had to run their work, and words, through an editor before it was deemed fit to publish, have now had that filter removed, and often with problematic consequences. In one of the more wellknown examples, a Sportsnet broadcaster was fired after he tweeted against gay marriage.

In one instant in broadcasting, the words are in the throat and in the next they are out. Broadcasts have vast numbers of people working behind the scenes, producers, editors, technical staff, but none of them can turn back time.