The South Korean broadcaster considered it better to offer its viewers something different. Something unusual. Something which turned out to be, as they admitted, an ‘inexcusable mistake‘.

Namely, each country was described on-screen by captions or images. A few examples for you to understand the dimension of it all:

• Team Romania entrance was accompanied on South Korean TV by an image of Dracula.
• Team Italy entrance was accompanied by an image of a pizza
• Team Ukraine offered the South Korean broadcaster the opportunity of displaying images from the Chernobyl disaster
• Team El Salvador entrance was acompanies by an image of Bitcoin, as the cryptocurrency is legal in this country
• For Team Norway a salmon fillet was shown

And the examples go on…

The captions used by the broadcaster were even more intriguing:

• When Team Haiti entered the arena, the South Korean viewers could read on their TV screens: ‘The political situation is fogged by the assassination of the president.’
• Marshall Islands were described for the South Korean viewers as ‘a former nuclear site for the US’
• Syria was described by the words: ‘Rich underground resources; a civil war that has been going on for 10 years.’

Yes, the local broadcaster apologized for this ‘inexcusable mistake’, but the stereotypes about the nations will certainly live longer than these Olympic games. And the Italians indeed make the best pizza out there and the Norway fishermen catch the tastiest salmon, but this is not something to define a nation, especially during the Olympics.

The post CNN: Pizza for Italy and Dracula for Romania. South Korean broadcaster apologizes for its Olympic ‘inexcusable mistake’ appeared first on Valahia.News.

Irina Nistor, one of the film critics hired by the Romanian National TV Station, was the one who was translating all the movies illegally brought in the country and played over and over again by Romanians on VCRs. Her voice and her style were so recognizable that she became one of the most famous public figures even after the Romanian Revolution from 1989 and she is still a public figure at this moment.

This is why the latest story from CNN’s Great Big Story, The Voice of Hollywood in Communist Romania, features Irina Nistor, one of the most beloved voices during the communism.

I am the most famous voice in Romania for films. During the last year of communism I voiced over 3,000 titles. Of course, it was illegal. It was an opening to freedom.

Irina Nistor for Great Big Story of CNN

She was tolerated by the communist regime at that time, though. Maybe even the authorities realized that Romanians had to enjoy at least some of the films produced in Hollywood, as the only Romanian National TV station was not able to buy the rights to broadcast the latest Hollywood movies.

They (the communists) were interested not to show anything connected to religion, sex and so on. (Or anything) about food, because we couldn’t find any of these products. (…) The only salvation was VCRs. There was a black market for VCRs at that time. It was the only window to the Western world.

Irina Nistor for Great Big Story of CNN

Irina Nistor remains one of the landmarks which will always remind people of a time when censorship was the rule and thus, as she stated, it was absolutely essential to fight for art without censorship. But, in the same time, she will always remind people of a time when she offered millions of people a virtual ticket to Hollywood movies. And that, during those times, meant freedom.

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