'Pampered' Media Members Facing Backlash For Tweeting Sochi Problems
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Yellow, murky tap water. Warnings about what a toilet can and can't handle. Missing floors, door handles and light bulbs.
The complaints have been flooding in -- and going viral on social media -- as media members get settled for the Winter Olympics in Sochi. But just as quickly there's backlash forming from people who say journalists need to stop grumbling about their accommodations in Russia and start focusing on covering the games.
One columnist in the Toronto Star even accused reporters from around the globe of turning "into Ugly Americans when venturing beyond their comfort zone."
"Perhaps I'd be more empathetic if my room was freezing and my bed only five-feet long, as some of my colleagues claim," the Star's Rosie DiManno wrote Wednesday.
DiManno said the complaints out of Sochi were a predictable outcome due to "a couple of thousand cranky reporters in one place" armed with Twitter and "a reason to gripe."
"But the Olympics are no country for old sissies," DiManno wrote.
Others were taking aim at the so-called cranky journalists on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/KarlreMarks/statuses/431032126742351873
There have also been safety concerns. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security recently warned airlines that explosives could be hidden in toothpaste tubes and assembled once in Sochi.
The Winter Olympics run from Feb. 7-23.
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