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Apart, perhaps, from the unusually mild weather, nothing seemed out of the ordinary this morning when Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago made his round past the various international media outlets that had set up shop in Millennium Park.
The Bean reflected and deformed the compact Mayor and the crowds that flocked around him; Chicagoans passing by asked him for photographs, and he posed patiently; the radio and television correspondents that had been granted an interview asked all the predictable questions â âIs Chicago ready for this event?â âWhatâs the significance of this event?â; Daleyâs answers were similarly predictable, if perhaps somewhat presumptuous ââThis is an event to celebrate [Sen. Barack Obamaâs] victory,â he said: âAnd thatâs a very significant thing; people want to be part of history.â
But, as a Swiss television reporter pointed out, the European media would like to be âpart of historyâ too, and, right now, they werenât. Because, hold on a minuteâMillennium Park? Wasnât the Obama rally going to be in Grant Park? Then what were all these foreign broadcasters doing here, in the shade of the Bean? Shouldnât they be out at the five-story riser set up across from the stage where Obama will be speaking this eveningâand where the crowds are expected to be?
They should. And they wouldâif they could.
Bill Dunlop is president and CEO of Eurovision Americas Inc, the American branch of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the largest association of national broadcasters in the world. According to Dunlop, foreign media interest in this election day is unprecedented.
âAll major television networks in European countries are hosting special overnight election programsâ, Mr. Dunlop said, adding that âthe entire European press corpsâ is in the United States right now, with correspondents in Washington, Phoenix, and Chicago. Overall, EBU operates sixty-eight fiber circuits between the United States and Europe to carry their broadcasts, compared to only twenty-five on 2004âs election night. Forty-five EBU membersâall the major public television networks from Germany, Italy, Spain, and France, as well as âmost of Eastern Europe, and the Russiansâ, have correspondents reporting from Chicago tonight, and they rotate on EBUâs seven stand-up positions in order to give audiences back home a live impression of whatâs happening in Grant Parkâexcept that they are not exactly in Grant Park.
âWe applied for eight positions on the riser,â which holds eighty positions in total, at $1000 per spot, Dunlop said, âand we were told by the Obama campaign last Thursday, five days before the event, that we were given only one. Obviously we cannot possibly rotate forty-five correspondents on one position.â
Pleas to the Obama campaign about âthe huge interest of European audiencesâ in tonightâs event âall fell on deaf earsâ, Dunlop said. The result: EBU is now broadcasting from Millennium Park, far away from tonightâs action and excitement. (Said Dunlop: âThe Obama campaign has underestimated the huge interest in the event.â He added that EBU had applied for four positions at the McCain rally in Phoenix, and was assigned the requisite numberâeven though the McCain event is hosted inside a hotel ballroom, as opposed to the much larger scale Obama event outside.) The Obama campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
The city of Chicago, meanwhile, proved of little help, declining the EBUâs request for a spot nearer Grant Park. When asked, by that same Swiss reporter, how Mayor Daley could âexplain such a disasterâ (the disaster being that âthe European media are outside, unable to report on the biggest event in recent historyâ), the mayor raised his hands in a âI-didnât-do-itâ manner and replied: âSecret Service! Secret Service!â
âThe US Secret Service does all the credentials of all the media. I have nothing to do with it. I donât handle PR, thatâs not my job,â Daley said.
Not his jobâand not his problem either. âI love my city, we are very proud, and we welcome you to our city,â he told the disgruntled reporter; and therefore, he wished not to be pestered about such trivialities as a broadcast location. âYou should be happy youâre hereâ, the mayor saidâupon which he excused himself, and all but disappeared into the glaring sun.
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