Why Ai Takahashi and Fuji TV announcer Sakuma’s “exclusive chatting time” at the Paris Olympics drew a flood of criticism.

The men’s volleyball team of Japan, which fought fiercely for its first gold medal in 52 years since the Munich Olympics, ended the Paris Olympics with a match against Italy on August 5.

Japan played a great match against a very strong team that had qualified in first place, winning two sets in a row, and although Italy fought back from the third set onward and regrettably suffered a setback, it was a great match that proved Japan’s volleyball is at the world level,” said a reporter from a national newspaper covering the event.

Immediately after the defeat, captain Yuki Ishikawa (28) and the rest of the national team shed tears of regret in front of the crowd and bid farewell to coach Philippe Blanc (64), who will retire at the end of this tournament. In the South Arena in Paris, the venue of the decisive match, there was a person who was sobbing harder than the members of the national team.

She is Minami Sakuma, 26, an analyst at Fuji Television Network. She has long experience as a sportscaster, and is the main anchor of the Sunday edition of the Fuji-affiliated sports program “Suport! She was chosen to anchor the Paris Olympics partly because she is the main anchor for the Sunday edition. She was also there to cover all four men’s volleyball matches. After the Italy game, she was crying in the mixed zone. She must have been so devoted to the men’s volleyball team.

During the period, Sakuma covered judo, gymnastics, and various other sports, impressing reporters from both TV and newspapers with his enthusiastic work and wealth of knowledge. However, a number of reporters at the ballet scene voiced their dissatisfaction with Sakuma. Why was this?

She was “keeping Ai Takahashi (22) to herself” during the interviews for the three matches in the preliminary round. Ai Takahashi is a star in the men’s volleyball world along with Ishikawa and Yuji Nishida (24). The media is inundated with them, so each reporter is trying to get the story out fairly so that more people will be informed, and it would be a problem if they were monopolized…” (A sports newspaper reporter covering men’s volleyball)

After the match, the players are interviewed in the mixed zone in the order of Japanese TV stations, foreign media, and Japanese newspapers and other print media. Sakuma belongs to the TV station where he can be interviewed the earliest. ……

I remember that Anna Sakuma took part in an interview in the Newspaper Reporters’ Zone after the first match against Germany. To be honest, at the time I thought, ‘He’s enthusiastic and great. There are many announcers who leave as soon as they finish their own work. When the interview was over, Sakuma caught up with Ai Takahashi, who was smiling and enjoying the chatting time. Ai Takahashi, who has worked with her before, also showed a relaxed smile that she had never shown to us reporters. To put it plainly, she was a bit delirious. The two of them talked longer than dozens of reporters in an interview. There was probably some chatting that had nothing to do with volleyball, but it was after the match and after the interview, and I thought it was a very funny scene,” he said.

However, during the match against Argentina on July 31, Sakuma violated a “taboo.

This time, before the reporters interviewed him, he gave them the same “monopoly” time as he had for the Germany game. Time is of the essence when covering the Olympics, and even if the athletes themselves wanted to continue, the event staff would sometimes cut them off. In such a severe environment, the reporters of each newspaper have to get the true feelings of the athletes and write a breaking news article to convey the excitement to the public. Yet, before the reporters could interview Ai Takahashi, Sakuma caught her near the foreign media booth and started “chatting” with her. Male staff members were standing next to her, but almost all of them were talking to her.

Ai Takahashi was bending at the waist, making eye contact with Sakuma, and smiling as they talked. It was like they were a couple. The reporters, whose limited interview time was taken up by the two chatting, were like, ‘It’s fine to get to know each other personally, but do it after the interview! This is an interview site, not a place for socializing. This is an interview site, not a place to interact. We were all very upset.

In the end, the “chatting time” between Sakuma and Ai Takahashi was set aside even for the U.S. match that decided the qualifying round. A sportswriter who came to the Paris Olympics to cover the games said, “Sakuma and Ai Takahashi were chatting.

A sportswriter who came to cover the Paris Olympics said, “It is true that Sakuma and Ai Takahashi seemed to be very close, and their long chatting may have suggested that they had more than just a relationship between the interviewer and the subject. However, the only thing Sakuma did wrong was the timing. It is the job of the interviewer to get to know the subject and to get the true feelings out of him or her that others might not be able to get out of him or her. Regardless of the formality of the interview, Sakuma was able to monopolize the star of the show, and can be considered a very good interviewer.

This may sound like a bit of a criticism, but reporters in the print media, on the other hand, are too focused on “not taking over what other companies have heard during the interviews,” and they do not interview the players individually. Even when there was a chance to talk to a player one-on-one, some reporters ran away, saying, “I don’t know what to ask in a face-to-face interview. Are they really in a position to criticize Sakuma? It seems to me to be jealousy on the part of the reporters who couldn’t get into the subjects they were covering.”

Sakuma was so passionate about volleyball that she shed tears before Japan’s defeat. It seems that she is not only a good announcer but also a good reporter.