http://www.canada.com/topics/sports/tsnstory.html?id=6478090
Beijing, China (Sports Network) - Sitting here in the Main Press Workroom inside the sprawling Main Press Center, I can see journalists from all over the world.
In front of me, two Australian radio journalists are writing updates. One has just reported on two elderly Chinese women who were denied time and time again the right to protest the seizure of their land to build Olympic venues.
Over there, a Japanese writer is scowling at his computer, glancing left at a sheet of paper, then back to the screen. His forehead is creased with lines. It is a common sight here.
Two rows in front of me, empty water bottles and scrap paper cover parts of the desks where a handful of Cuban reporters worked for the last 2 1/2 weeks, covering, among other things, their baseball team's silver medal and the taekwondo athlete who kicked a referee in the face on the second-to-last day of competition.
American photographers from one company, men and women, sit on my row editing and photoshopping their pictures from Sunday morning's marathon. It was won in Olympic-record time by a Kenyan: 2 hours, 6 minutes and 32 seconds.
Our marathon has lasted at least 100 times longer -- each long day covering these Beijing Olympics beginning in the morning and lasting well into the next morning.
But we are lucky. We are writing in a country where press freedom is not guaranteed to its own citizens. We write what we want, cover what we want. It's like a Dutch citizen coming to the United States and legally selling dope because that's what he's permitted to do back home.
But we are also not lucky. And I don't mean those few foreign journalists who were roughed up by Chinese police trying to cover the scattered protests that have popped up here and there in Beijing.
I mean everyone sent here to cover the Olympics from countries where the press is free -- or if not totally free, then mostly free -- in a country where its own writers are not allowed to do the same.
In a country where the native population could be jailed for writing the things some of us have written.
It would be right for some of us to feel a little guilty, like we have sold our souls for our jobs.
China is the world's leader when it comes to a lot of things, population included. There are 1.3 billion Chinese. One out of every five of us is Chinese.
The country is also the world's leader when it comes to imprisoning journalists. There are currently 26 journalists imprisoned for their work in China, according to research provided by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
Another group, Reporters Without Borders (RSF), puts that number at 29. RSF reports that Cuba is next on the list with 23 journalists imprisoned for their work on the small island country.
Before I left the U.S. to come here, I did research. I received the CPJ report "Falling Short" about the Chinese not living up to the promises they made when they were awarded these Olympics. Among the promises, a loosening of strict laws preventing the press from reporting freely.
The last journalist imprisoned in China was locked up earlier this year.
But in the rush to make my shuttle Sunday morning, the last day of competition in humid Beijing, I left my folder in my suitcase back in my hotel room. I can't leave now to retrieve it because -- well, I just can't. There's no time.
And I can't read it online. Simply trying to log onto the report at the CPJ's Web site produces the dreaded "Connection Interrupted" screen on my computer.
Another common sight here in the media center.
You also get that screen trying to search for information about the banned religion Falun Gong, for example. Media protests ahead of the opening ceremony lifted bans on other Web sites, such as the one for Amnesty International.
Chinese citizens have not enjoyed the slight loosening of the regulations. They still can't see the sites that have been unblocked for the foreign media.
Leaving the folder back in my room means I can't share the stories of some of the journalists who are in prison here, including at least one who has been locked up since the early 1980s. One writer was imprisoned for writing about so-called "cardboard sandwiches" in Beijing. But most are behind bars for subverting state power.
Woodward and Bernstein would have been hanged here.
So I can't tell you about these journalists because I am not permitted to read about them where I am sitting. But you are. You can read about them here: http://cpj.org/Briefings/2007/Falling_Short/China/index_new.html.
The athletic legacy of these Games will be in the accomplishments of Michael Phelps, Usain Bolt and the hundreds of other competitors who thrilled us during one of the most exciting Olympics in recent memory.
There is something to be said, too, of the thousands of helpful volunteers who put a friendly face on China by working as hard as the rest of us to make sure their jobs were done well -- to make sure our jobs were easier.
But the overall legacy might very well be of something else.
Something not deserving of a legacy at all.
Like it or not, we are all married to China for the near future. The country is just too important to us. It makes too many of the things we buy, buys so many of the things we make.
It is a center piece in the puzzle. And a puzzle unto itself.
"Through the Games, China has been scrutinized by the world and has opened up to the world," IOC president Jacques Rogge said in his last press conference in Beijing. "The world has learned (about) China and China has learned about the world."
What we're all permitted to learn, anyway.