Time has an interesting story on the problems broadcasters are having preparing for the Beijing Olympics, with the possibility that coverage of the games might be affected. One decision which has irked broadcasters is that they are unable to broadcast live from Beijing’s icon Tiananmen Square.

“For us to potentially not be able to do live reports from Tiananmen — the most iconic place in China — is a disgrace,” said Scott Moore, executive director of Canada’s CBC Sports. “I’ve been told that to do business in China, you have to have patience. We don’t have time to have patience. The games have begun for us already.”

Broadcasters are being told to put all requests and complaints in writing adding to the mounting paperwork and approvals for those requests are coming through too slow.

“We are two weeks away from putting equipment on a shipment and we have no clearance to operate, or to enter the country or a frequency allocation,” said Sandy MacIntyre, director of news for AP Television News. APTN is the television arm of The Associated Press.

China is uneasy about the arrival of all of these international broadcasters. If they broadcasters aren’t given the freedom to set up for the games and film what they want, it is going to cause a bigger embarrassment for China.

“The Chinese are very concerned about something going wrong — and so they are in Olympic gridlock,” said John Barton, director of sport for the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union, which represents broadcasters in 57 countries.

“This is the greatest moment in their sporting history,” Barton said. “They’ve built a stage on which they want to perform, but they are rather queasy about how it should be shown.”

“They are suffocating the television coverage in the crazy pursuit of security. They can’t secure the event. Nothing can be totally secure, yet they are trying to do that.”