I'm just about finished reading 'War Reporting For Cowards', something my mum dredged up for me in her Belfast bookshop, and sent off with a covering note about eating vegetables and brushing my teeth. (She's convinced I'm still 12.) It's a highly entertaining account of an English hypochondriac working for The Times, who somehow finds himself embedded with the US Marines as a frontline war correspondent in Iraq. Dream job, really.

Apart from the fact that I'd doubtless respond to a similar position with the same degree of terror, I can further identify, in that I've had the same role in a South African sporting context: not long out of university, and trying to fashion a career as a radio broadcaster, I found myself at Loftus, doing live rugby commentary for a Cape Town radio station, on a Bulls-Province game. Oh, and the station had decked the commentary team out in Province jerseys — and arranged us seats in the terraces, so that the immediacy of the crowd could provide ambient atmosphere for our commentary.

We survived, just (a security guard only just saved us from being assaulted with an empty bottle by a large woman with a mullet and a rather unflattering pair of rugby shorts), but it was a harrowing day out, certainly up there with dodging landmines and avoiding the Iraq Republic Guard. (Chris Ayres, who wrote 'War Reporting For Cowards', might disagree; I challenge him to call the rugby from a thicket of Bulls support while dressed in blue and white hoops.) All perils of life in the media, then; which brings me rather nicely to a man for whom life in the media has, until now, been a seamless blur of international travel, inflated expense claims, and front row seats at the world's greatest sports events.

Kevin McCallum is well established as South Africa's finest sports writer, and as a result has covered just about everything that's happened on a sporting stage in the last decade. Rugby World Cups, Cricket World Cups, Football World Cups, the Olympics, the Paralympics, Tours de France, an assortment of South African tours abroad, and myriad other events for which he frequently isn't remotely qualified to cover, but still produces vivid commentary and gung-ho reporting from. All off a platform of liquid lunches, wild nights out, and the general misbehaviour of the old-school reporter at large, a category McCallum now pretty much defines.

The little Irishman got back from France last week, having followed the tail-end of the cycling — and has walked into the opening hurdles of what could well be this year's toughest sporting event to cover. For the last three days, McCallum has been hitting his head against the unflinching wall of officialdom that is the Chinese bureaucracy, as he attempts to procure the visa that will get him into China for the Olympics. Which start on Friday, in case you'd somehow missed the news; you can understand why McCallum's getting a little nervous.

But it's when he finally does get to China (and my Zimbabwean schoolmate Kingdom is rustling up a visa just in case), that the really interesting stuff begins. For while the competition will cover the usually spectrum of Olympic thrills, it's the context that will make it so fascinating. The Chinese government follows the Robert Mugabe school of media appreciation, and until last week, internet access was severely limited, with those journalists accredited for Beijing set to work within very strict parameters, in an attempt to control the image of China projected to the world.

Internet access has been largely eased after plenty of loud muttering from the fourth estate; cloak and dagger visions of journalists being tailed by Chinese agents, and having phones and laptops bugged, don't seem all that far fetched. And while the majority of the assembled hacks will be happy to file on the sport and then head of to generate some substantial expense claims, it won't be long before the stories China is desperate to smother, filter into the global press.

Stories of smog and pollution are inevitable; when the first activist reporter opens up on human rights, say, or Tibet, or press freedom, the response of the Chinese government will be fascinating. At least, it will from afar; McCallum and co. on the frontline might not garnish it with so light a term. On one hand, an enormous gathering of media at the world's greatest sports event, spotlights assembled en masse to cover every moment; on the other, a totalitarian government delighted to expose China to the world, just so long as the exposure follows their own careful script. The fireworks in Beijing could well extend beyond the opening ceremony.

Of course, it might turn out to be an incident free Games — McCallum assures me he's planning to nothing more than explore Chinese beer, watch plenty of swimming, and kick anyone he sees in a Team Australia tracksuit firmly in the shin. But I can't see the Beijing Olympics unfolding without at least a couple of sparks, and I'd imagine most of the media to have descended on China will be feeling something similar. It's not the frontline in Iraq, perhaps, or the untamed wilds of Loftus; but it's going to be one very interesting time to be a sports journalist.

  • Contact Dan at dan@metropolis.co.za
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