Reporting the Olympic Medal Race: NBC’s Creative Counting

Expect NBC and other U.S. media outlets to downplay the fact that the U.S. is lagging behind China in the gold medal race by focusing on the total number of medals.

Here’s what it looks like at the NBC website:
And here’s what the medal race looks like according to media outlets from other parts of the world. From ABC-Australia:

From the BBC:
From the Canadian Broadcasting Co:
From xinhuanet:
It is telling that only the NBC is focusing on the total number of medals rather than the gold medals won. The Olympics isn’t halfway yet, and the U.S. has a very good chance of surpassing China in the gold medal count, but this “creative counting” is ridiculous. I wonder what NBC would do if the top two is reversed, that is, that the U.S. has more golds but China has more medals overall.

Anyways, what do the gods of teh internets, i.e., Google, say about the matter? Well, the gods have spoken and they’re counting based on the gold medals won. But then maybe they’re doing it because they would still want to be in the good graces of Beijing. You know, kind of like when they agreed to censor websites in China.

Update: Thanks to our anonymous commenter who added this link to a Wall Street Journal article which addresses this issue. The article states that this U.S.-ROTW (rest of the world) divide in how medals are counted is historical. So I may be wrong in my earlier assumption that NBC is doing this only because the U.S. isn’t leading the race for gold medals.