During last night’s live broadcast of the Italy – Australia football World Cup game, CCTV’s announcer Huang Jianxiang (黄健翔) got rather excited, and took sides with the Italians, saying things like “Don’t give the Australians any chances!” and after Italy won, “Long live Italy!”
Here’s a video with about half of Huang’s impassioned commentary:
Today Chinese blogs are castigating Huang, accusing him of gravely insulting Australia and being a disgrace to Chinese football fans. Beijing blogger Fly Show (心飞扬) has a post about it titled Huang ‘Long Live Italy’ Jianxiang, you can go home now. The post ends thusly: “Sorry Australia, please forgive our crazy man!” The post has a photoshop banner, which you can click here to see if the blog link doesn’t work. The banner reads:
Excited … Agitated … Out of Control
What kind of commentators do we need?
Huang was pulled from CCTV for six months in 2001 after bluntly criticizing then-coach Milutinovic during broadcast for his players’ errors in a game against Qatar, and there’s talk now that he’ll be punished in a similar way.
Now here comes the strange part:
There is a piece of Chinese text circulating on the Internet that claims to be an Associated Press (AP) report, saying that more than 30 Australian football supporters surrounded the Australian Embassy in Beijing today, demanding that the Ambassador make a formal complaint to the Chinese government about Huang Jianxiang’s commentary.
And Chinanews.com.cn has just published an article titled Reuters pays attention to ‘Huang Jianxiang incident’, says China’s football commentary is not objective. The Reuters report is here, but the AP protest story doesn’t seem to exist.
Are Chinese netizens making up their own foreign news reports?
Please leave a message in the comments if you know anything about this affair. The Chinese text sent to Danwei, marked as from Associated Press, is below.
UPDATE: A more complete version here credits the AP piece to a Clark Kent (克拉克·肯特), so draw your own conclusions….
UPDATE 2: According to a note circulating on the Chinese Internet, Huang Jianxiang has been punished by CCTV. The note purports to be from CCTV’s Information Office. His punishment? He will be suspended from commenting on football games and wait to see how he behaves. However, this punishment does not start until AFTER the World Cup ends.
The Chinese text of the note is below.
Spoof AP story by Clark Kent:
北京时间6月27日凌晨1时多，30多位澳大利亚球迷包围了澳大利亚驻北京使馆，他们要求本国大使前往中国外交部进行交涉，以处罚一位出言不逊的中国电视解说员。但澳大利亚驻华大使艾大伟并未出面，而是由参赞布兰登·鲁斯进行了接待。美联社记者了解到，该参赞向球迷承诺将在27日上班后向中国外交部提出交涉。短短数分钟后，球迷离开使馆。而北京的其余地方并未出现澳大利亚球迷和中国人的冲突场面。记者随后来到中国外交部，值班工作人员告诉记者并未接到澳大利亚使馆的投诉。
来自中国中央电视台的解说员黄健翔可能将为自己的冲动付出代价。
CCTV Information Office
由于在2006年6月26日23：00分的世界杯直播中，中央电视台体育频道解说员黄健翔的部分言论不符合《中央电视台解说员规范守则》第二章第3条“比赛解说不得带有任何个人情绪”的有关规定。经研究决定，给予黄健翔取消一切足球比赛解说资格处分，以观后效。处分于本次世界杯结束之日起开始执行！ 望黄健翔认真完成余下的世界杯解说工作，圆满完成任务！
中央电视台新闻办公室 2006年6月27日