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If it were possible to measure confidence on a device with a scale, Hansens numbers would have been off the charts in the week of the final. He wasnt complacent, or arrogant he simply knew that his side had the measure of the Wallabies in every way.

He respected them, knew the dangers they posed and was aware that Australia had emerged through the so-called pool of death and were in great form, battle hardened and a different team to the one they had been a few months earlier at Eden Park when the All Blacks thumped them. Still, they left none of the residual doubt in Hansen the way the semi-final fixture against the Springboks had. Since Hansen had been elevated to the top job, the All Blacks had beaten the Wallabies eight times, drawn twice and lost once.

A big part of his role that week was trying to keep the team shielded from distractions. That meant not putting into the public domain anything the Wallabies, especially their coach Michael Cheika, could feed off in the buildup to the final. Hansen didnt want the media to have cheap, inflammatory headlines they could twist to provoke tension between the two teams and further enhance the sense of grievance the Wallabies appeared to be carrying.

Hansen, throughout his tenure, had used the media to niggle the various Australian coaches hed encountered. He made his famous loaded gun remark about Robbie Deans. In 2013 and 2014 he frequently baited Deans replacement Ewen McKenzie accurately predicting what selections he would make, then offering him some advice about why they were maybe not the right ones. These sorts of remarks were not off the cuff. Hansen was entirely strategic in the way he occasionally baited a rival coach.

He didnt do it for the sake of creating drama or a bit of theatre. He did it, ultimately, because he had determined it would be of benefit to the team. And to reach the conclusion that it was best for the team, he had to weigh up factors such as his confidence in winning any verbal exchange. He didnt ever pick a fight he didnt think hed win.

In the case of McKenzie, somehow Hansen knew through his incredible network of informants that tension was rising in the Wallabies over the coachs inability to settle on a No 10. Hansen also felt that McKenzie, despite fancying himself as a sharp media operator, was no intellectual giant and not in possession of the sort of sharp wit and calculating mind that could hold his own in a verbal sparring contest. Hansen felt he could dominate McKenzie in the media and hurt his confidence by doing so.

But Cheika, who took over the Wallabies in November 2014, a job he held co-jointly with his head coaching role at the Waratahs until the end of Super Rugby in 2015, was a different story. Cheika, in Hansens view, was dangerously volatile. The Australian had a reputation for being abrasive. He was unpredictable and hot-headed, as demonstrated earlier in 2015 when coaching the Waratahs in Super Rugby.

At half-time during a match against the Blues in Sydney, Cheika had stormed into the referees room to make some suggestions about where he was going wrong. It was a clear infringement of the rules but what made it more reckless was that Cheika did this at a time when he was under a six-month suspended suspension for kicking a cameraman. Somehow Cheika escaped being banned, but Hansen was amazed that a coach of such standing and experience would risk so much just to berate a referee in a Super Rugby game.

Hansen, then, couldnt be sure of the value in trying to get under Cheikas skin in the week of the final. He didnt know how the Australian would react and more importantly, Hansen sensed that Cheika liked the idea of getting into a verbal scrap and would relish it. Cheika was eager to portray his team as the underdog and was fostering a siege mentality. He would have twisted anything Hansen said and used it to further convince his players the world was against them. The Wallabies had harnessed that sense of grievance all tournament to great effect and Cheikas modus operandi was to use that energy to instil controlled anger and a greater alignment of purpose between players and coach.

That calmness and focus was taken on to the field by the All Blacks and they went about patiently, but quite ruthlessly, dismantling the Wallabies in the first half, before Nonu went on to blast 50m to score and push the All Blacks to a 213 lead. Hansen felt that come the final quarter, the floodgates would open. The game did turn in the final quarter, but not in the direction everyone had been expecting.

Ben Smith was yellow-carded for a dangerous tackle after 58 minutes and the Wallabies scored two tries to close things up at 2117. Still, even though the Wallabies scored two tries while Smith was off the field and closed the gap to just four points, there was never any sense of panic in Hansen. He knew that McCaw was at the zenith of his powers and would calmly, with 15 men again on the field, bring everyone back to the task at hand. He knew that the set-piece was dominating, that the All Blacks were in control of the breakdown and when Carter landed a 40m drop goal after 69 minutes to restore the lead to seven and Hansens face came up on the big screen as the ball sailed through the posts, and the world was looking at a coach who knew his team had won.

The World Cup in 2015 was a tournament that went the way we planned it to go and I think the outcome was pretty special for rugby because I dont think too many tournaments had been won by a lot of points being scored by either team, he said.

And that final game was a pretty good game of footy. Australia wanted to play and we wanted to play and so you got a good game and it was an accumulation of each week being done right and to win World Cups that is what has to happen, but it was a really enjoyable tournament. The 2011 one was tough because we just had to win it and it was all done when it was finished. But this one was enjoyable all the way through. Dad didnt have the opportunity to say to me go and win the World Cup in 2015. He would just have expected it. I didnt have that wee moment straight after the final which I did in 2011 thinking about Mum. When I reflected on it later I might have said to [my wife] Tash, It would have been good if the old boy had been here.

This is an edited extract from Steve Hansen: The Legacy by Gregor Paul (HarperCollins NZ, HB) RRP $50 (NZ) $45 (AUS), available now

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Media tactics and strategic baiting: inside the mind of ex-All Blacks coach Steve Hansen - The Guardian

Nick Penzenstadler, USA TODAY and Brian Freskos, The Trace| USA TODAY

President Joe Bidens pick to lead the Justice Departments gun agency hinges on a final decision by Sen. Angus King, an independent from Maine, that could kneecap a key plank of the administration's gun violence prevention agenda.

David Chipman, a former agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, has faced a steady drumbeat of allegations since his nomination in April, ranging from complaints that he made discriminatory comments about Black agents during his tenure to fears that he would try to radically limit Second Amendment rights.

Chipmans supporters launched a final full-court press on King with private meetings this week at the end of a bruising nomination, which featured millions spent in lobbying on TV, radio and the internet, alongside disinformation about the former agent and his family that turned bizarre and threatening.

Advocates are hoping for a floor vote before the Senate breaks for its August recess this weekend. All Republicans are expected to vote against the nominee, meaning Majority LeaderChuck Schumer could afford no defections if he is to eke out a tie that could be broken by Vice President Kamala Harris.

Republicans maintain Chipmans recent work with gun control groups like Everytown and Giffords disqualify him from the position that holds law enforcement power over the nations gun manufacturers, importers and sellers. (Everytown provides grants through its nonpolitical arm to The Trace, which partnered with USA TODAY in this coverage.)

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the president knew the Chipman nomination wouldnt be easy, citing the lack of a confirmed director for the past six years. Weve been eyes wide open into the challenge from the beginning, she said Wednesday at the White House press briefing.

When asked about the opposition of King, who caucuses with Democrats, she instead pointed to the GOP: We are disappointed by the fact that many Republicans are moving in lockstep to try to hold up his nomination and handcuff the chief federal law enforcement agency tasked with fighting gun crimes.

Gun control advocates said this week that focus shifted to King despite unknown votes by other moderate Democrats, including Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Sen. Jon Tester of Montana.Two leading gun violence prevention advocates met with King by phone Wednesday morning.

One of them was Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter was killed in the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in 2018. He hasbeen an outspoken supporter of Chipman and appeared with Biden in the Rose Garden in April to roll out the president's gun control proposals.

After the meeting with King, Guttenberg told USA TODAY that he gave us the time and I think it mattered.

At this point its on him to take any additional steps on a final decision because he has become the crucial piece in this conversation, and the gun lobby knows it, Guttenberg said. This has been ugly, and its not about the nominee. As someone who has to visit his daughter in the cemetery because of those tactics, Im disgusted.

Po Murray, an organizer with the advocacy group Newtown Action Alliance, said she told King on Wednesday to consider the views of families and survivors of gun violence more than the smear campaign from the corporate gun lobby.

David Trahan, executive director of Sportsman Alliance of Maine, said his influential group of 50,000 members lobbied against Chipman, hoping to sway King.

Our biggest objection is overpoliticizing a law enforcement agency and the ramifications it would have around the country to impact a fragile relationship with groups like ours and gun owners, Trahan said. I served with (then Maine Gov.) King in our state Legislature, and I know hell do whats best for the country.

A spokesman for King, traditionally a Biden ally, said the senator continues to review the nomination and declined to say whether hed meet again with Chipman.

Chipman would have oversight of both the ATFs law enforcement investigations and regulatory infrastructure to hold the nations gun shops accountable. A recent USA TODAY/The Trace investigation highlighted the lax punishment many of the worst offenders face after inspections.

Read the investigation: After repeated ATF warnings, gun dealers can count on the agency to back off

The political fight picked up steam this week with Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and others calling either for a second hearing for Chipman or for the White House to withdraw the nomination.

That came on the heels of answers to Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas about two Equal Employment Opportunity complaints from ATF employees alleging discrimination by Chipman. In written testimony, Chipman acknowledged he was the subject of the complaints but said both were resolved without any finding of discrimination and no disciplinary action was taken against me.

Conservative media outlets and a gun rights website amplified the complaints and concerns over Chipmans interaction with Black recruits to the agency.

Tom Jones, president of the American Accountability Foundation,a conservative group that does opposition research on Biden nominees,said the group had filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit for Chipmans personnel files.

AAF has known for months that David Chipman is a toxic nominee and unfit to lead the agency, Jones said in a statement. Make no mistake: his history of racist and derogatory comments have only come to the publics awareness because of AAFs tireless efforts.

Grassley and others also called for the ATF to release more personnel files. An ATF spokesman said that, as a retired agent, Chipmans full personnel file is held by the National Archives and generally not releasable without Chipmans consent.

Chipman declined to comment for this article.

In response to calls for both another hearing and allegations of discrimination, Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin of Illinois wrote Monday that the effort was part of a campaign to derail Mr. Chipmans nomination and tarnish his record and reputation. He said he would not hold another session.

Durbin also took time to point out disinformation distributed by Chipmans opponents throughout the nomination.

He cited a widely circulated image of an armed FBI agent standing at the Branch Davidians compound in Waco, Texas, who was erroneously identified as Chipman and a report that he misplaced his service weapon as an ATF agent a claim denied by Chipman and the agency.

On Wednesday, Fox News published a report accusing Chipman of intentionally hiding an appearance on Chinese television from 2012, which quickly took off on social media with charges of treason and memes depicting the former ATF agent as Chairman Mao Zedong.

A group of Republican congressmen led by MontanaRep. Matt Rosendale distributed a draft impeachment document to file against Chipman should he be confirmed, alleging that he will fail to defend the Second Amendment and that he lied to Congress when he denied losing his service weapon while on duty.

Gun rights groups added pressure. The National Shooting Sports Foundation, a gun industry trade group, ran television ads against Chipman in West Virginia and Maine, and the National Rifle Association urged members to tell their senators to reject his nomination.

The nomination fight brought out waves of hyperbolic memes featuring Chipman in vulgar settings. His presence at the Waco siege days after the violence was merged into misinformation that is forever digitally tethered online to his image as Crispy Kids Chipman and Waco Dave.

Others took aim at Chipmans wife, Tara, who until her retirement in July was a division chief in the ATFs public affairs office. Anonymous bloggers and social media sleuths claimed victory for her resignation after posting about what they called a massive conflict of interest.

Tara Chipman told USA TODAY that she retired to avoid the conflict of working under her husbands leadership or staying on in the aftermath of a failed nomination.

She cited cases of online harassment including conspiracy theories tied to her mother, Olivia Cajero-Bedford, a former Democratic state senator in Arizona who proposed a ban on the bump stock devices now banned nationwide.

The negative attention was more than either of us expected, especially me as a spouse, Tara Chipman said Wednesday. I dont know why anyone would want a Senate-confirmed position in government.

I feel kind of powerless because of course I want to go after these people, but I dont want to do anything to endanger Davids nomination.

In June, an anonymous Twitter user posted an address in Virginia that purportedly was the Chipmans home.

Tara Chipman said the address is actually a rental property the couple owns and she feared for her tenant. She reported the post to Twitter, she said, but the company declined to remove it.

Biden announced Chipmans nomination in April alongside executive actions to restrict homemade, unserialized ghost guns and the widely popular firearm accessory known as a pistol stabilizing brace, which was used to kill 10 people at a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado, in March.

Chipman had advocated similar measures. In 2018, he co-wrote a report calling for tighter controls on stabilizing braces and criticizing the ATFs inconsistent approach to regulating them.

Many observers believe the odds were stacked against Chipman from the beginning given his statements in favor of gun control.

He has advocated an assault weapons ban, and there are a lot of pro-gun people who would never support him based on that fact alone, said Norm Bergeron, a former ATF agent who retired in 2017. With the Senate essentially split 50-50, it doesnt take much to hold up a confirmation, and everybody has their own opinion.

During his June confirmation hearing, GOP members of the Senate Judiciary Committee lambasted Chipman for his gun control advocacy work and past statements on firearm ownership, including when he compared first-time gun buyers to zombie apocalypse preppers.

Grassley, the committees top Republican, said giving Chipman reign over the ATF was like putting a tobacco executive in charge of Health and Human Services or antifa in charge of the Portland Police Department.

The committee ultimately deadlocked along party lines over advancing Chipmans nomination, which requiredDemocrats to jump through procedural hoops to bring it to a vote by the full chamber.

The ATF has been overseen by a series of acting leaders since 2006, when gun lobbyists swayed Congress to take away the presidents power to appoint the bureaus director without Senate approval. Since then, every nomination has stalled with the exception of B. Todd Jones, who was confirmed in 2013 after an intense lobbying effort by Democrats.

Jones stepped down two years later, and President Barack Obama did not put forward a replacement. President Donald Trump tapped Chuck Canterbury, former head of the national Fraternal Order of Police, but eventually withdrew the nomination after Republicans expressed doubts over his commitment to gun rights.

No matter who the nominee is, people are going to dig into their background and find one little thing that they said or one group that they may have connected with, and theyre going to exploit that for their own political means, said Joseph Bisbee, a former ATF agent in Seattle.

Bisbee said the lack of confirmed leadership has undermined morale among the rank-and-file and made it difficult for the bureau to set long-term priorities.

It would be nice to have someone who has the experience and exposure and knows what needs to be done and how to navigate it, he said. But the way its currently set up, I dont know that thats ever going to happen.

Contributing: Joey Garrison

Nick Penzenstadler is a reporter on the USA TODAY investigations team.Contact him at npenz@usatoday.com or @npenzenstadler, or on Signal at (720) 507-5273. Brian Freskos is staff writer with The Trace, a nonprofit investigative journalism outlet focused on firearms. Contact him at bfreskos@thetrace.org.

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Nasty memes, disinformation, politics drive waning days in battle to confirm Bidens pick for ATF - USA TODAY

Everyone, lets just take a moment.

Stop. Take a deep breath. And lets really try to figure out whats going on.

Last week shook our country. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told those of us in COVID-19 hot spots to start wearing masks indoors again, even if we have been vaccinated. That recommendation goes for most of the country.

We hear a new frightening phrase: delta variant. Then we see scary numbers again the number of new COVID-19 cases, people being hospitalized, people dying, breakthrough cases of those testing positive for the coronavirus after having been vaccinated.

Just when you thought we had turned the corner and we all came out of our cocoons ready to return to something close to normalcy, we see these numbers and hear these warnings, and you assume that were going backward.

But these horror stories and numbers are often presented without context, without nuance, without all the facts. The media, perhaps even unintentionally, often isnt telling the full story in the fight against COVID-19, and this is leading to confusion and panic.

On CNNs Reliable Sources, anchor Brian Stelter said, The problem starts with the CDC and its absolute failure to communicate clearly and effectively. Sloppy news coverage makes a bad situation worse.

The coverage has been sloppy. Weve seen news organizations play up the number of new cases. Weve seen news outlets suggest that vaccinated people can transmit the virus as easily as unvaccinated people. We saw several media outlets cover a story in Barnstable County, Massachusetts where Cape Cod is that showed a high percentage of positive COVID-19 cases were people who had been vaccinated.

But again, context is needed.

For example, that county in Massachusetts with the high percentage of breakthrough cases? Not one death among the vaccinated, and less than a handful of hospitalizations. And the reports that vaccinated people transmit the virus as easily as unvaccinated people is misleading because vaccinated people are far less likely to get COVID-19 to begin with.

The New York Times tweeted that an internal CDC report claimed, The Delta variant is as contagious as chickenpox and may be spread by vaccinated people as easily as the unvaccinated. But Ben Wakana of the White House COVID-19 response team retweeted, VACCINATED PEOPLE DO NOT TRANSMIT THE VIRUS AT THE SAME RATE AS UNVACCINATED PEOPLE AND IF YOU FAIL TO INCLUDE THAT CONTEXT YOURE DOING IT WRONG.

(The Times followed up with a more clear tweet.)

The bottom line, based on the numbers, is the vaccines are working. That doesnt mean vaccinated people still cant get COVID-19. No one ever claimed the vaccines made you 100% immune and perhaps health officials and the media should have emphasized that when vaccines were rolled out. But the numbers show that severe illness and hospitalization are extremely rare among the vaccinated.

So what should the media be concerned about when it comes to COVID-19? Stelter suggests it should be hospitalizations and not cases. Then again, hospitalizations alone do not tell the story either because hospitalizations are mostly made up of unvaccinated patients. Again, thats the context that needs to be added to tell the full story.

CNNs Oliver Darcy reports that the Biden administration is reaching out to news organizations to make sure to include context in their reporting about COVID-19.

One Biden official told Darcy, The medias coverage doesnt match the moment. It has been hyperbolic and frankly irresponsible in a way that hardens vaccine hesitancy. The biggest problem we have is unvaccinated people getting and spreading the virus.

Want an example of how its done? Check out this clip from CNNs Jake Tapper, who used facts and numbers to say, Less than .001% of those fully vaccinated have experienced a fatal breakthrough case. Less than .004% of those fully vaccinated had to be hospitalized. In other words, the vaccines work. The vaccines remain the best way to protect yourselves from this virus. Period. Full stop.

That needs to continue to be the overriding theme at this point because thats what the numbers say. Those are the facts. Lets stick to those.

President Joe Biden last Thursday. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Lets not just blame the media for the confusion about COVID-19.

Axios Mike Allen and Caitlin Owens write, The Biden administrations handling of the Delta surge has left Americans confused and frustrated, fueling media overreaction and political manipulation. The past year and a half have left Americans cynical about the governments COVID response, and in many cases misinformed or uninformed. Were getting fog and reversals when steady, clear-eyed, factual information is needed more than ever.

Allen then gets to the heart of the matter by writing, Administration officials are awkwardly dancing around the fact that theyve run out of politically palatable ways to try to convince people to get their shot. Delta is getting out of control, and becoming angry or coercive with the unvaccinated could go badly.

The smartest comments I heard over the weekend about COVID-19 came from Dr. Celine Gounder on Reliable Sources. Gounder, an infectious disease physician, is host of the podcast Epidemic. Asked what we can expect moving forward, Gounder said COVID-19 will be something we vaccinate against along with all the other diseases.

I really do think that we need to steel ourselves for the idea that were not post-pandemic, Gounder said. Ive heard many people in the media say to me over the course of the summer, Oh, COVID is over. Ive even heard some public health officials who are declaring mission accomplished much too soon. This is going to be with us for a long time, really indefinitely and we have to learn to live with it. And vaccines are how we learn to live with it.

Some COVID-19 coverage of note in recent days:

What a chilling headline on this story from The Washington Posts Hannah Knowles: I should have gotten the damn vaccine, woman says fiance texted before he died of COVID-19.

Micheal Freedys fiance said Freedy was not an anti-vaxxer, but wanted to wait a year to see how the vaccine affected those who got it. Freedys fiance, Jessica DuPreez, has given several interviews since Freedy died of COVID-19. Freed left behind five children.

She told CNN, My kids dont have a dad anymore because we hesitated. I would take a bad reaction to the vaccine over having to bury my husband. I would take that any day.

Jane Mayers latest piece for The New Yorker, out just this morning, is an eye-opener and looks at who is funding the election-fraud myth. As The New Yorker describes it, Mayer investigates the network of well-funded conservative groups and dark-money organizations that have drafted, supported, and in some cases taken credit for state laws that make it harder to vote.

Mayer writes, Although the Arizona audit may appear to be the product of local extremists, it has been fed by sophisticated, well-funded national organizations whose boards of directors include some of the countrys wealthiest and highest-profile conservatives.

One such leader is the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C. According to Mayer, it has been working with the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-funded nonprofit that generates model laws for state legislators on ways to impose new voting restrictions. Mayer reports that the Heritage Foundation plans to spend $24 million over the next two years in an effort to promote what they call election integrity.

Important work on a troubling story by Mayer.

Tampa Bay Bucs quarterback Tom Brady in last seasons Super Bowl. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis, File)

How much would you pay to watch the Super Bowl on TV? You might find out someday. Former ESPN president John Skipper, who is now working with former ESPNer Dan Le Batard at Meadowlark Media, thinks were headed to a day when the Super Bowl will be a pay-per-view event.

During an appearance on Le Batards podcast, Skipper was talking in generalities and brought up the possibility of the Super Bowl being on pay-for-view.

I mean thats how theyre going to replace the money someday, Skipper said. Because theres not gonna be enough money in the advertising.

As Skipper noted, if sports fans are willing to pay money to watch a boxing match, they certainly would pay money to watch Americas premier sporting event. Skipper also said viewers might have the option to pay for a lifetime subscription to the Super Bowl.

Again, Skipper was more spitballing than anything, but this isnt outlandish. We already pay for things we really want to watch movies, TV shows and other sporting events, such as MMA fights and professional wrestling specials. Maybe a Super Bowl PPV wont happen anytime soon, but is anyone willing to bet it will never happen?

Have feedback or a tip? Email Poynter senior media writer Tom Jones at tjones@poynter.org.

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The media is making missteps in covering COVID - Poynter

TOKYO (AP) The IOC says the Olympics are only about the sports; no politics allowed. This will be the mantra, as it always is, when the Beijing Winter Games open in six months.

Covering ski races or figure-skating finals should be painless; just stay in the sports bubble and out of trouble. But reporters from other countries who puncture the PR skin to explore other aspects of life in China as they have in Japan during the Tokyo Olympics could draw more than criticism.

They could face harassment and threats if portrayals are deemed by the government and the increasingly nationalist public to be giving a negative view of China.

China demands complete adherence to its position on a number of issues, Oriana Skylar Mastro, who researches China security issues at Stanford University, told The Associated Press.

It demands this from governments, but also corporations, media, and individuals," she said in an email. "So, do I think China is going to go after anyone, including sports reporters during the Olympics, that deviate from the acceptable script? Yes, I absolutely do.

Chinas foreign ministry has repeatedly criticized the politicization of sports and has said any Olympic boycott is doomed to failure. It has not addressed journalism during the Games specifically.

The peril for journalists was evident last week when foreign reporters covering floods in central China were targeted. The Communist Youth League, an arm of the Chinese Communist Party, asked social media followers to locate and report a BBC reporter on assignment. That expanded into broader accusations against foreign reporters for slandering China with coverage that could be seen as critical rather than focusing on government rescue efforts.

In a statement, The Foreign Correspondents' Club of China said the rhetoric from organizations affiliated with China's ruling Communist Party directly endangers the physical safety of foreign journalists in China and hinders free reporting.

The organization added that staff from the BBC and the Los Angeles Times received death threats and intimidating messages and calls. This came after China last year expelled more than a dozen American reporters working for The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times.

Beijing was the IOC's unlikely choice for the 2022 Winter Olympics, a decision made in 2015 chiefly because European favorites like Oslo and Stockholm pulled out for financial or political reasons. The IOC was left with only only two candidates: Beijing and Almaty, Kazakhstan.

Beijing won by four votes, 44-40. The choice elicited sharp criticism from human rights groups, which continues.

The IOC has declined several recent demands to move the Olympics out of Beijing. China is accused by some foreign governments and researchers of imposing forced labor, systematic forced birth control and torture upon Uyghurs, a largely Muslim ethnic group Xinjiang, a region in the country's west.

China has denied committing genocide against the Uyghur people, calling such accusations the lie of the century.

Last week a vice president of Intel, one of the IOC's top 15 sponsors, said he agreed with a U.S. State Department assessment that said China was committing genocide against Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang. Other sponsors including Coca-Cola, Visa, Procter & Gamble, and Airbnb appeared in a congressional hearing but wouldn't answer most questions directly.

Its what I refer to as the Olympics Catch-22 for illiberal regimes like China, Victor Cha, an Asian specialist at Georgetown University, wrote in an email to AP. Cha surveyed the politics of sports in Asia and the 2008 Beijing Olympics in his book Beyond the Final Score. He also served from 2004-2007 in the Bush White House as director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council.

They want all the glory and attention of hosting the world for the Winter Games, but they want none of the inevitable criticism that comes with the media magnifying glass," Cha said. All hosts have to deal with this; witness all of the scrutiny over COVID pre-Tokyo. The difference is how the hosts handle it.

The IOC says its focus is only sports, though it's a highly political body with an observer seat at the United Nations. IOC President Thomas Bach touted his efforts to bring the two Koreas together during 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. He also addressed world leaders in 2019 in a G20 summit in Osaka, Japan.

Our responsibility is to deliver the Games," said Mark Adams, the IOC's spokesman. That is our responsibility. It is the responsibility of others the United Nations, who have been very supportive of the Olympic Games, and governments to deal with this and not for us."

He added: Given the diverse participation in the Olympic Games, the IOC has to remain neutral. Thats clear."

Adams was asked in an email if the IOC was willing to condemn China's policy of interning Uyghurs and other largely Muslim minorities." He did not answer the question and referred to previous statements. At all times, the IOC recognizes and upholds human rights within its remit," Adams wrote. This includes the rights of journalists to report on the Olympic Games.

The IOC included human rights requirements several years ago in the host city contract for the 2024 Paris Olympics, but it did not include those guidelines the U.N. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights for Beijing. Paris is the first Olympics to contain the standards, long pushed for by human rights groups.

In countless interviews about China and its preparations for the Winter Olympics, Bach has not mentioned the situation of the Uyghurs. Nor has he said it was a topic covered in meetings of his executive board.

The IOC, however, has promoted press statements about conversations Bach has had with Chinese President Xi Jinping, though it has not revealed the content.

The Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs, reacting to the BBC incident, essentially said the British news organization had it coming.

The BBC has a long history of ideological bias against China, ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said. It has been producing and broadcasting fake news, spreading false information on issues related to Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and the COVID-19 epidemic to attack and discredit China.

The BBC has been reporting on China with tinted glasses for a long time, which brought down its reputation in China," Zhao added.

Yaqiu Wang, a China researcher for Human Rights Watch who grew up near Shanghai, said the foreign media had brand credibility five or six years ago. But she said increasing information control by the Chinese state does not allow average Chinese to get a fair assessment of what the Western press is saying about China.

Wang said the mood is vastly different from 2008, when Beijing held the Summer Olympics. Many outside China hoped the Olympics would improve human rights, and some Chinese saw it as period of optimism. Controls over the foreign media were relaxed in the runup to the Olympics, which some interpreted as a relaxation on the political front after decades of reform and opening-up, as China refers to its 40 years of economic reconfiguration.

The hostility among the people is real, much more real than before,," Wang said. That kind of hostility did not exist in 2008, but it exists now. Among average people, they know that saying bad things about the West or being hostile, they know its in your interest to do that.

If you go to a stadium, it will be all good if they feel you are covering something good," Wang added. "But say you speak to some dissidents or somebody who is a victim of some kind of abuse, you could be in a dangerous position.

___

AP Sports Writer Stephen Wade reported from Beijing for 2 1/2 years covering the runup to the 2008 Olympics, the Games, and its aftermath. More AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2020-tokyo-olympics and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

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Beijing Games: Sports coverage fine, other things maybe not - AZCentral.com

In fact, he barely rates. His CNN town hall last week was a fizzle, averaging only 1.5 million viewers. Fox News easily beat it with its regular programming, and MSNBC had more viewers as well, dumping the president of the United States into third place in the cable-ratings race.

Hes underperformed in other more formal settings, too. Biden drew 27 million for his first address to a joint session of Congress, whereas Donald Trump drew 48 million.

The contrast with Trumps hour-by-hour, impossible-to-ignore cocktail of provocation and political melodrama, naturally, makes Bidens approach even more stark.

Hes the Olympic badminton competition after a WWE match; hes elevator music after a heavy metal concert; hes the sparkler after a fireworks display.

Bidens presidency is, in this sense, practically pre-modern, almost hearkening back to the pre-mass media days when presidents were neither seen nor heard.

Of course, this is in part a deliberate strategic choice by the White House, playing on the contrast with Trump and limiting Bidens exposure to the media to avoid distractions (and gaffes). Being a notably low-voltage political figure worked for Biden in his comeback primary campaign and in the 2020 general election, so why not as president?

As a result, Biden strangely doesnt feel like the main event of the Biden years.

Assuming it arrives, the midterm backlash in 2022 wont be directly about Biden; instead, it will be driven by the Biden-adjacent issues of the border, crime, critical race theory andif they reemerge in forcemask mandates and school closures.

Biden is the prime driver of only one of these issues, the crisis at the border that easily could have been avoided by keeping in place the policies the Trump administration had implemented to get control of the flow of migrants.

Otherwise, they are hot buttons where others besides Biden are the key players, whether governors, mayors, school boards, or education bureaucrats.

In other words, the culture war itself is likely to be the overwhelming issue in 2022, rather than the president.

This would be a marked departure from the midterm shellackings that Bill Clinton and Barack Obama got in 1994 and 2010, which were deeply personal rejections of both men (Clinton was viewed as a draft dodger unworthy of the office and Obama as a crypto-socialist hostile to American exceptionalism).

If no one on the right is enamored of Biden or his agenda, very little energy is invested in opposing him as such.

Indeed, the idea that tends to generate the most interest and passion isnt that the president is assiduously working to destroy the American way of life so much as Bidenwhose verbal meanderings can be truly bizarreisnt in charge at all.

Given the alternatives, this probably works in Bidens favor. He is pushing a truly radical spending agenda that would, if championed by a more in-your-face progressive president rather than someone who feels like a caretaker, surely be met with much fiercer resistance.

But there are risks to Biden, too. If his spending agenda flounders, its not clear what comes next. Even if the White House decides to try to unleash Biden, he is not not obviously well-suited to rallying the country or driving an agenda. Hes always been a talker, but never an orator.

His low-intensity presidency may, as his advisers hope, help create a sense of a return to normality in Washington, but it easily could be consistent with a disturbing sense of drift. Usually, the dynamic of the presidency is if you dont seem to be in control of events, they are in control of you.

The test for Biden will be if, eventually, he has to be the dominant public figure in his own presidency.

Excerpt from:
Opinion | The Biden Era Has Surprisingly Little of Joe Biden in It - POLITICO