Ex-Olympian hopes public can be ‘morally’ correct
Former Canuck high jumper urges people not to retweet skater’s costume malfunction
Former Olympian Nicole Forrester says the live broadcast of the wardrobe malfunction during Sunday night’s ice dance competition at the Pyeongchang Games was unfortunate and unavoidable.
But the former Canadian highjump champion says social media users can avoid amplifying the incident and making it worse by not retweet- ing and sharing the uncensored images.
“The issue I take more is how the public reacts thereafter and people having the grace and the maturity to be sensitive to how someone might be feeling and the idea that you might feel mortified,” said Forrester, an assistant professor in Ryerson University’s RTA School of Media.
“You don’t actually want to have the world retweeting and not being sensitive in that sense, so I would hold more accountability to the general public as being morally and ethically correct.”
Forrester said she felt mortified for French skater Gabriella Papadakis when her costume became loose and revealed one of her breasts while performing on ice with Guillaume Cizeron.
The live performance on CBC was quickly followed by a slow-motion replay.
While some Canadian social media users criticized CBC for airing the footage, which was carried live around 11:20 p.m. ET, the network responded with a tweet explaining that it uses the local feed for the event and that the footage would be edited out of encore broadcasts.
A CBC spokesperson was not available for comment Monday.
“It’s not the first time we’ve seen incidents like this happen, whether it’s an athlete being interviewed right after in the heat of the moment or a performance at the Super Bowl or something,” Forrester said.
“I think those are the woes of live broadcasting and it happens.”
Forrester hopes people realize the impact they can have on the athletes who are at “the pinnacle of their career” and added Papadakis still has to compete in the long program on Tuesday.