Maybe not sugar coated, but Carrillo and Collinsworth defend their takes on Beijing

Once a prime-time segment, NBC's Mary Carillo has cozied up to Bob Costas in the studio and brought forth another human element of the Chinese culture to the Beijing Games telecast. Whether it be the art of kite flying, the mating habits of panda bears, the man who created the Olympic logos, or accupunture treatments complete with what looked like a joint smoking on top of the needles to add to the room's aura, the pieces have been insightful, compelling and given us cloistered Americans another look at the Chinese culture that we might have not otherwise seen.
So where's the stories on protestors and human rights violations?
Not on Carillo's watch.
"I haven't done any hard-news stories that others have been doing," Carillo said this morning, before going to bed (it was about 10:30 p.m. Beijing time). "I can't say I've shied away from them, but I was never really assigned to them."
Carillo said she'd been to China twice before arriving for the Beijing Games -- last September, she was in Beijing, Shanghai and down to the Yangtze for two weeks, and last spring she traveled to some of the other providences.
"Many of my friends are print writers, and they knew I was making those trips and getting stories, and so many of them would say, 'Aren't you doing something on that?' I think a lot of sportswriters came here with a real agenda and had to drop them because they've seen the people and there's just to many random acts of kindness around here. It's amazing. You'll find taxi drivers who are not only willing to take you somewhere but will walk you to the shops if you're still confused about where you're going."

(Maybe one of those with an agenda who stuck with it is Sports Illustrated's ESPN's Rick Reilly, who spun this Onion-looking story for a column this week (linked here).

Carillo also noted that Dr. Nancy Snyderman, the "Today" show physician, came over intending to do stories on steroid issues and the pollution problems, "but those stories went away."
Cris Collinsworth, NBC's other prime-time feature reporter, chimed in on the conference call and added that this is the second time he's been to Beijing -- the first was with his family on a vacation three years ago.
"I have yet to come across an unpleasant situation," he said. "And I'm not just talking about the Olympic crowd. When I was here two or three years ago with my family and going in through some very small villages and mingling with people, they knock themselves out when they know you are a Westerner. They try and accommodate you and make you feel welcome and make you feel comfortable. So you do get a little bit of a unique perspective on it. It's easy to question politics, but it's much tougher to question the people here. They've been wonderful."