The Chaser Report - Snoop Dogg Gave Better Olympics Coverage Than Nine | John Delmenico

Episode Date: August 13, 2024

Chaser editor John Delmenico joins Dom Knight for another day of recapping everything that happened at the Paris 2024 Games. And covering it far better than 9Now did, that's for sure. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gadigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is the Chaser report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser with Dom Knight here. Charles is still in the UK. This is part two of our Olympics wash-up. A rap with John Delmenico, editor of the Chaser. There's so much to discuss from Paris 2024 that we thought we'd break it into two halves. So part two coming your way in just a moment.

It's going to feature Snoop Dogg. and a lot of other randomness for in the past two weeks. But hey, it's better than talking about Australian politics, isn't it? Thank you for your patience. Your call is important. Can't take being on hold anymore? FIS is 100% online so you can make the switch in minutes. Mobile plans start at $15 a month.

Certain conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. Okay, so of the performances, who caught you wrong? eye amongst the many Australian medals. I still can't quite believe we're fourth on the table. Yeah, it's great. I mean, I think as well, just the, like, genuinely just the women is still very high on the table. Hmm.

Because there was some bizarre metrics, 13 of the goals, of the 18 goals. At one point, I saw a post from Griffith University saying that Griffith University was ninth on the medal table or something. So it's been an incredible performance. And I mean, I've always thought that the game should stop at the moment when the swimming ends. I don't think we should have the second week with the athletics. I think it should really just be swimming and other water sports. The rowing, canoeing, maybe a little bit of cycling too,

but I don't like the athletics, the track and field as a rule. I think we could also, I think for the Brisbane Olympics, we should just do swimming, but then also allow the Matildas to play. Yes. Like specifically just swimming and the Matildas. I mean, the Matildas, that was one disappointing aspect of the games. I mean, we were sort of foreworn given that they barely qualified. but a bit of a worry.

I mean, they subbed out the coach and in honour of his coaching style, they waited until it was way too late to make that sub. Yes, that's true. They did. And without Sam Kerr, it's unfortunate. So we do need to get onto the cloning, please.

I thought it or she could just coach them next time. I mean, maybe that's the solution. Or they could try playing strikers in the first half of the match, which they did not do in any of the games and then surprisingly didn't score goals. Who knew you needed the people who score goals To score goals

Well, I'm hearing They're building the team around Mary Fowler going So that'll be good Because she's got her own Barbie And so there's no way that won't pay off We should copy the Canadian tactic I don't know if you saw this Dom When New Zealand was training for their game

They noticed a drone over their head Yes And then they accused Canada of filming them And Canada said We are sorry for using a drone To record your training session twice Which then They admitted to it?

They admitted to it And they said they did it twice New Zealand didn't know they did it twice they didn't accuse them of doing it twice so in their apology they admitted to doing it an extra time. They're way too honest that's why they can't, they never win things you can't win like that. You can't

have this sort of industrial style cheating. Now do we ever get to the bottom of the Chinese swimmer who broke the 100 metres record by like a second? Because that was, I mean there were questions weren't there? Yeah, like people said like immediately Australia came out and was like, oh, that's

faster than humanly possible. Yeah. It's not often that in 100 metres you shave a second off the time. Was he one of the ones who they eventually said, oh, he had a meal and that's why he tested positive? Or was that one of the other swimmers? I don't want to fame anyone by suggesting they were taking improper substances. But I think some of the swimmers at some point had tested positive and it had all been explained by a meal that somehow tested positive for, I don't know,

steroids or blood doping or something. Oh, yeah, he was one of the people. I've just Googled it. Amazing fact checking we have here in real time. Take that, Joe Rogan. And it's just a reminder to me as well of how ugly the news.com the website is. That's why I'm trying to figure out what happened.

Sorry to make you go to that. But it does make sense that if you wanted news on the games, you'd go to a site other than a nine newspaper's site because the fact that their journals were on strike for the first five days of the games is one of the things I remember for a long time. I loved it so much because, like, Channel 9 was very confident that they did not need the journals,

and then immediately it went to shit. Like, the first day, everyone was like, it's weird that it's not journals talking about it, and instead it's Carl Sepernovic and the glass. guy from the block. And Mark Taylor, of all people. We can barely commentate care at the on cricket, let alone, I think they got him to do with the diving or something.

Yeah, they also sent Chip LaGrant to be the on-field reporter. If anyone who doesn't know who Chip LaGrand is, he is the chief Victorian politics editor. Yes. He's never done sport, and he's mainly just went there and was like, I don't know what I'm doing. Here's some transphobia. And then just spent a week posting transphobic articles every day.

But as against that, clearly not a member of the MEAA, Union. Yeah. So, you can always get his answer to who the non-union journalists are at times like that. My favourite thing was... But hey, you've got a trip to Paris out of not being in the Union, presumably. I mean, I'm just making assumptions. I don't know for sure.

He was in the Union. Google it yourself. Because my favourite part of the story was about him, which is where it got leaked that Bevan Shields tried to be like, oh, come on, guys. Don't make it scabbing that if for people to break the strike to cover the Paris Olympics, we sent them all the way there. And he, like, tried to manipulate the strike into allowing the Union members. who flew over to Paris to break the strike.

That's bizarre, given that the entire purpose of the strike was to hit them when they're covering the Olympics, presumably. Yeah, I mean, that was the thing that former ABC boss Ida Butros condemned because she put out this weird statement and she was like, I think it crosses the line to do it at the time of the Olympics. And it's like, yeah, no, that's the whole point. That's the whole point. You want to hit them at the moment where you're proving that you're needed the most.

I'm just looking at Chip Legrand's work here. And look, I don't know whether he's part of the union or not. I don't want to make any calls on that. The number of articles he had to write during the Paris Games. I mean, he's done dozens of them, John? Yeah. They could probably get rid of the whole Melbourne newsroom and just keep Chip LeGrand doing his thing. Yeah, while no one wants sports reporters covering the sports anyway,

they give all these like facts and figures and they know what they're talking about. Everyone knows the best journalists in the country are the ones who cover politics. Yes, and then and then weigh in on boxing. Yeah. My very thing about, the way thing about Channel 9 specifically in how, heavily they leaned into the transphobia, including bringing in writers specifically to write those articles, is that they're also the ones who condemned the transphobia? Like, they put an article in like, wow, the media is so disgusting in how they've covered women's sport. And it's like,

that, that's you. Before, they bookended that article with two other articles running the exact same lies and misinformation. And it's like, you can't be like, okay, no, everyone should send hate to this person. Also, it's really bad people sending hate. Now, back to saying, go back to the hate. John, I think there's a lesson for you here as editor of the Chaser website. What you need to do is ferment anger over on one side and then criticize the anger on another side. It's like it's a closed loop. That's what you need to get into. You need to get into being able to condemn yourself to make life easier.

Yeah, we do have this weird thing that most other Aussie outlets don't have. We're like, weirdly, because we're the satire outlet and we focus less on spreading lies. And that's why we don't get the clicks anymore. I think that's a shame. I think you need to revise your business model. So there's a lesson for you in all of this. to create a scandal, then condemn the scandal. And maybe the shot can partner with us on that.

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few days after it happens. All right, so look, at the end of all this, what else are people talking about? I mean, the thing we haven't touched on yet, which is not something you normally cover during the Olympics, but it did seem to be one of the biggest stories of the entire games was the presence of Snoop Dogg. He was great, genuinely very good at commentating. I don't know if you've seen his commentary of the equestrian, but he didn't know what it was, and he just started raking the horses by how well they'll crippwalking.

Yeah, I mean, that's, I love that it's sort of like, it's almost a parody of itself, but then it's actually genuinely entertaining. This is the thing about Snoop Dog. You could get him to do anything, and it would be entertaining. And this is what we need. We need people to cover the Olympics who are just inherently amusing or cool or different. And that way doesn't matter. It can be something as boring, and really in many cases,

as sort of concerning in terms of welfare as a horse-based event. Snoop Dog, you don't have to worry about it. I mean, they should do this for, like, war crimes trials. Get Snoop Dog to report on it. And we won't worry about it anymore. It'll be fine because he's, you know, doing something entertaining and talking about the Crips. It is weird that America sent Snoop Dog and Kevin Hart and some other comedians over to cover the Olympics as their personality hosts.

But we were smart enough to send Carl Slefinovick. Well, who wants Snoop Dog when you have Carl? He is our Snoop Dog if Snoop Dog was awful. I'm just trying to think of what they got in common. It's a very, it's a Venn diagram that's not overlap very much. It's just the drugs. It did genuinely make me a little bit sad to watch the NBC coverage, where at one point they crossed a Colin Jost, who was there on holiday.

And they're just like, oh, yeah, they paid for my trip. So here's some sport, I guess. And it was really funny. Yeah, and then didn't he get sacked? Pardon? Yeah, that's, apparently they then got rid of him. I was reading the other day. So I think this is, this is progress, John, because what this tells us is that NBC,

after many years of covering it as though it was a serious event, which it is in some disciplines, I'm sure. I mean, obviously the Americans are deeply invested in the dream team and all that. They now realize that the Olympics is so. ridiculous that you should cover it with Snoop Dog and Kevin Hart and other committees. I think that's something Australia should really work on. I think acknowledging that things are ridiculous at the beginning is a really, it's a very modern and sensible idea for the media to do.

But then also, if we do that, then we wouldn't have what Channel 9 did, which is instead of paying journalists, they all had, like, fancy dinners with the boss. Like they, like, we... That's true. You can't fly over the boss of Channel 9 to have fancy dinners with all of his friends. if we're going to say it's a silly event, because that makes it no longer a business expense, Dom. That's what the Olympics is all about is rich people getting to have caviar while everyone else does some sport or whatever. Which people will be getting to go to Paris for a business right off.

Look, it sounds good. Finally, John, the LA Games I see today has promised to be car free. Now, I wouldn't say I know Los Angeles as well, but I've been there a couple of times. And it seems to me that unless something's changed, you can't move one meter in Los Angeles unless it's by car. There's like, I don't think they're do streets that you can walk on, and there certainly isn't any public transport. What's the plan? They're going to ferry people around in drones or something? Is Elon Musk's boring company going to put tunnels everywhere that they need to go?

I mean, it is funny that they're like, oh yeah, because our traffic is so bad, we need to avoid using cars. As if there isn't a reason the traffic is famously terrible. Whoops, this is something we can't control. Oh no, there's cars everywhere ruining the city. Who knew? I mean, it is nice. So they also figured this out four years out. I'm sure that America in particular will be able to bring out.

are a very good public transport system that works well and is ready for such a large thing in just four years time. Sure. Oh, look, they can get the Sydney Metro designers to do it. That'll go down pretty well. But look, it is true that traditionally speaking, games of Minnesota do get rid of the uncomfortable thing. No, they do get rid of poor people.

They get rid of rough sleepers. They ship them out of the city generally is how they deal with it. China even tried to get rid of rain. Didn't they see in the Beijing Olympics? They had sort of silver going into the clouds trying to stop the rain for coming. So I guess getting rid of cars. in L.A., that's a genuinely huge challenge. By the same

token, should the Brisbane Olympics commit to being Bogan Free in 2032? At that point, though, what's the point of having it in Brisbane at all? Yeah, that's true. We should have... The streets would be empty. They had Celine D. on at Paris. We should have Bob Cutter. Just put Bobcat. Don't

tell him that it's the Olympics or anything. Just put a microphone on him and he'll give a performance. Absolutely. And I think the way that we like the cauldron is that he takes his enormous hat off. It burst into flames and that's it. That's the called on. I think we've solved it. We've made a lot of progress. Well, look, it's certainly going to something to talk about for two weeks, John. Now back to the misery of Australian politics for The Chaser, hey?

Yay. I tried to look at the politics in the last few weeks, and the biggest thing was that Boris Johnson, not Barnaby Joyce said the word bullets, which people tried to make it into a massive thing, but like, who cares? The chaser defending Barnaby Joyce, there you go. No, it's true. I tuned back in with Sammy Shaw for an episode a little while ago, and we tried to look at Australian politics, having thought a lot about the US and everything else.

And we just couldn't do it. I think we might have been finally broken by Australian politics. It finally won. I was reminded today going to the shops that in Canberra we're having an election soon. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, I didn't know that.

I found out today because there was a politician at my, at the shops. And you know, and that was crazy because that's how I was reminded that the ACT liberal party still exists. Okay. There you go. Breaking news from Canberra. There's still a liberal party. Technically speaking, at least in the ACT.

John, thank you for all the work from you and the team. During the games, there's some very good headlines on the site, and we'll catch you another time. All right. Thanks for having me. Our gear is from Road. We're part of the icon class network. Speak to you soon. Thank you for your patience. Your call is important. Can't take being on hold anymore. Fizz is 100% online, so you can make the switch in minutes. Mobile plans start at $15 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca.