Blogger Removed From NCAA Game for Blogging 302
CNet is reporting that a blogger from the Courier-Journal of Louisville, KY was recently ejected from an NCAA game for live-blogging. "According to the Courier-Journal, staff blogger Brian Bennett was approached by NCAA officials in the fifth inning of a game between the University of Lousville and Oklahoma State, told that blogging 'from an NCAA championship event "is against NCAA policies (and) we're revoking the (press) credential and need to ask you to leave the stadium."'"
"In Soviet America"? Please. (Score:5, Insightful)
First, let's get this out of the way: this is the NCAA, not the government.
Second, let's go to TFA:
The Courier-Journal said that the University of Louisville sent out a memo from NCAA manager of broadcasting Jeramy Michiaels, prior to Friday's game. The memo said, in essence, that no blogging was allowed during the game.
Check.
But Bennett had not been approached after live-blogging previous games in the playoffs.
Oh, so then it must be okay? Talk about a non-story. The guy just got caught violating a policy that he knew about and probably even agreed to as a person with press credentials.
This was a person who wasn't removed for "blogging", but a person with press credentials who was providing live coverage of the event.
The NCAA naturally wants to control access to live (and recorded) broadcasts of games (and currently has the legal right to do so), whether they be video, audio, or even text. How or why is "blogging" magically different or protected?
Could someone set up a radio broadcast station from within an NCAA event without arranging the necessary licensing with the teams and the NCAA? Could someone do the same with a cell phone and broadcast it to a pirate radio station? Sure. The answer is you can do it if you don't get caught. Conspiracy theorists will wail about how it's all about money and control, just another example of censorship in our corporate/government-controlled police state society, ignoring any and all other aspects to order and law in a civil society, and the fact that, believe it or not, economic factors actually do come into play when a lot of money is involved in producing something.
Do you think ESPN, CNNSI, CBS and other sports news aggregators get the content for their live play-by-play event services on web sites and mobile devices for free? Hell no. The "information wants to be free" and "everything is okay when it's done using technology, but only when it's the people and not corporations or government" arguments can be saved for elsewhere.
What if I want to set up a network of personnel across the country who live-blog every NCAA sporting event, and broadcast it on a web site. Maybe one with ads. And then I pay people to live blog for me. At every event. And maybe all of those people can have computers with cameras, and stream video as well. Well, why not? I should be able to do that, right? No? Where do you draw the line?
If everyone wants to have bloggers be considered legitimate "journalists" no matter who they are, they're going to have to play by the same rules everyone else does, too. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Sure, sure, he's just "reporting on the event" with "newer technology" than the old antiquated dinosaurs, right? Wrong. He's providing some semblance of live coverage of the event, and that's something other content providers have to license and pay for.
If you're live-broadcasting an event, the NCAA is likely to get its feathers ruffled, and not allow you to do it. This is not the government, and if you think it's "censorship" or inhibiting free speech or that bloggers are just "journalists", except in more real time, then why don't you get all up in arms about not being able to broadcast the video or audio from the events live or in near realtime, either?
This isn't about "blogging". It's about live/near-live coverage of an event by a person with press credentials - that is another critical point - without having paid to do so, like everyone else who provides such coverage has.
First Amendment my ass (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't a First Amendment issue in any way, shape, or form. This is an organization not letting an individual participate because he will not abide by their rules. You can kick people out of private events basically at whim, as long as it's not on the grounds of race, religion, sex, etc. This guy was given a press pass (ie he didn't even pay to get in!), and he got kicked out for doing something they didn't like.
That said, it's tough to say whether this was a bad move or not. In one way, this blogger is competing with the radio/tv broadcasts. On the other hand, it's some no-name newspaper that probably takes very little attention away, and kicking him out is only going to generate bad press.
Re:Fair enough - tax refunds? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:-5 Strawman (Score:4, Insightful)
NCAA policy expressly prohibits live-blogging/coverage of the game by press, he was informed of it in advance, he had press credentials; he violated the policy anyway, got caught, and got removed.
End of story.
And no, there is no first amendment question here at all, government or no. And if there is, it's the same for any other live coverage of an event by any mechanism. I know the whole "Congress shall pass no law" thing is pesky, but yet there it is. I guess that's why your argument is always best served by trying to link government and corporate interests, making corporate "censorship" a de facto first amendment issue.
This isn't some journalist innocently trying to report the game with new technology that bucks a business model, or a guy who might want to tell his buddies about the game via computer. It's someone who wants to be considered a journalist, with journalist credentials, violating the policy set forth by the issuer of said credentials.
Not much more to say about it.
Re:"In Soviet America"? Please. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Fair enough - tax refunds? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:First Amendment my ass (Score:3, Insightful)
In essence, it is not a problem to write down the notes on paper, go home, and post them to a blog. Allowing you to post live to a blog may violate the NCAA's tv contracts, though.
It is a shame, but this should serve to show how commercialized even college sports have become. It is one reason I avoid sports events entirely.
New doesn't exclude (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"In Soviet America"? Please. (Score:3, Insightful)
And if you were caught, you'd be warned and then ejected. Why? Because your buddy didn't pay for a ticket to the game.
How the hell is that stupid? That's how licensing works. Welcome to the real world. No we will not stop the ride so you may get off. This has been tested in court, the NCAA has the right to control this. End of story. If you don't like it, don't patronize NCAA events.
Re:"In Soviet America"? Please. (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Federal or state does not matter when it comes to First Amendment issues. The First Amendment applies to the states via the Substantive Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment. This is a quasi-governmental agency (NCAA) and a state university, using state property, and using state resources to enforce their policies (police, courts). The Constitutional dimension to this case is not as black-and-white as you seem to believe; however, I tend to agree with the bulk of your analysis. The key is whether state action is present. Lacking that, there is no need to continue the legal analysis.
2. The fact that he was blogging or doing it via "text" is incidental. Replace blogging with a camera or a microphone, and then try to make a free speech argument out of it.
Take it further. Replace blogging with "talking to your friend on a cellphone about the game as it's going on." Under the NCAA interpretation, this would be violating their policies. I would like to see them try to enforce that. The answer is, short of requiring everybody to turn in their cellphones at the gate, they can't.
Simply accepting a license to attend a sporting event does not strip you of all rights. As an example, there is a line of 4th Amendment cases regarding the propriety of, and limits to, searching sporting event attendees.
Re:First Amendment my ass (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"In Soviet America"? Please. (Score:4, Insightful)
True, but according to free market economics, I have the ability and right to boycott private organizations who participate in such behavior.
Getting this information out and the opening and decrying it helps others to do the same and to know the truth about this behavior.
Even though it is legal, it doesn't make it right in my views and I can voice my opinion by not supporting their private organization.
Re:-5 Strawman (Score:3, Insightful)
The government cannot bestow rights upon an individual or a corporation. Rights either exist or they don't. Governments can choose whether or not to enforce rights, however. But that is their primary (and in the end, only just) purpose, to ENFORCE and PROTECT rights. In this case the NCAA has a Copyright on broadcasting of their games. They can choose to license or not license that right as they see fit. It's theirs. There's nothing in the first amendment that says they have to let you sit in the stands and report on their games if they don't want you there. That has nothing to do with the government bestowing any monopoly power upon them. It's THEIR game. If you don't like it, go somewhere else.
You should try visiting reality sometime. Journalists can write about whatever they wish, but they do not get a free license to be wherever they wish when they do this. This is the purpose of a press pass; it's a way for an entity to tell and individual "We recognize the contribution your reporting on this event will add to society and as such we are giving you the ability to view it freely and report on it afterwards." This does not make someone a corporate shill, it simply allows them access that they otherwise would have to pay for (or even in some cases could NOT pay for, as evidenced by my experience w/ Press badges at GDC). This is being done as a FAVOR to the journalist, not as some mercenary contract. If the journalist chooses to spit on such kindness, then they can report on the event from outside.
As I've said to many people today: Get a life.
The Real Scoop (Score:5, Insightful)
But here's the thing with this story.
Whether or not someone can blog an event depends on some things. If it's an NCAA event (as this game was), it's the NCAA's call. As far as I know, the NCAA prohibits blogging at all of its championship events, including the College World Series and the Superregionals. It sucks, because even I as an institutional representative can't blog about my team, but as several other posters have said, there are a lot of rights and a lot of cash floating out there, between TV and radio, as well as livestats on the web and the ad revenues it generates. Monetarily, the NCAA is doing itself a favor, as well as the institutions, by restricting this.
Louisville WAS NOT restricting the blogging - the NCAA was. The blogger may have gotten away with it at the basketball, probably because that event is so huge and unwieldy from a media standpoint they couldn't track him down/know he was doing it, and the Orange Bowl isn't an NCAA event.
Most institutions don't care. I don't care. Hell, I WANT people blogging my school because it means we're getting that much more exposure. 17 year-olds aren't reading about us in the newspaper - they're reading blogs, and they're going to hear about us that way. I blog my own events during the regular season, but unfortunately, once its NCAA time, it goes out the window.
And don't do the whole "it's a state-funded school" thing - 90% of these schools don't see a dime of state money for athletics. Their athletic depts. are set up as corporations that generate their own revenue and are mostly driven by student tuition activities fees, football, men's basketball and corporate and private donors.
So, in conclusion, the NCAA is perfectly within their rights to restrict this, even though it's Evil and all that.
Also, to the earlier poster who said that ESPN, CBS, etc. pay to get their live statistic game feeds - not true. Most all of the scores and stats you see on ESPN and CBS come directly from the institutions themselves. For example, if I'm the statistician for a football game, we send a live stat XML feed to our web provider, and it also gets FTP'd straight to ESPN. For schools that use the CSTV service, it goes to CBS Sportsline (which owns CSTV). For games not feeding stats like that, there are a few companies that will actually call the press row line (or, if they feel like being a pain in my ass, my cell phone) and ask for the score, high scorers, etc. ESPN owns the largest of these, SportsTicker.
Re:"In Soviet America"? Please. (Score:4, Insightful)
The first amendment applies manifestly to the federal government, even if it can be extended to states.
The Constitutional issue of whether the 1st Amendment applies to the states, and state universities in particular, is absolutely black-and-white under current jurisprudence. It does.
But this isn't really a first amendment issue; under this person's press credentials and terms, he is allowed to relate the events of the game, just not live, from the event, because live or near-live coverage is covered by other licensing and costs. Other journalistic entities do essentially live textual coverage of games, and they have a license to do so.
If he is a valid member of the press, whose primary purpose is reporting on (rather than retransmitting) the event, then it becomes a First Amendment issue. You cannot license the terms by which the press utilizes their First Amendment prerogative. The issue becomes whether, by "live blogging" the event, he was engaged in an impermissible rebroadcast rather than, for lack of a better word, "journalism." As with most legal issues, it is open to interpretation, which was my overriding point: the blogger may well have a case.
The NCAA isn't even a quasi-governmental agency. It's a private association.
While the Supreme Court held that the NCAA was not a state actor in NCAA v. Tarkanian, 488 U.S. 179 (1988), that holding is limited to the facts of that case, which are manifestly different than here. I submit that it is an open question. You may indeed be right, but I tend to fall on the other side of the argument.
The NCAA's right to control and license the live/near-live and recorded contents of its events has been tested and confirmed in the courts.
I have no doubt that it has, although I would be interested in the line of cases. This is not a retransmission, however, which carries particular legal significance. I submit it is an open question whether or not his "journalistic transformation" of the events creates a First Amendment issue. Would your analysis be different if he had purchased a ticket and sat down to watch the game with the public, laptop in hand?
Re:-5 Strawman (Score:3, Insightful)
You went from an incomplete but possibly correct argument to something that is absolutely positively false.
The very existence of a corporation is due solely to the government *bestowing* that right. Avoidance of consequences for your actions through legal mumbo jumbo is not a natural right and can not exist without it being granted.
In this case the NCAA has a Copyright on broadcasting of their games.
Right. Now your homework is to go and look up what a copyright is. It's a right that did not exist in any way shape or form until the government granted it. It is not a natural right and without a government grant of it, it does not exist anywhere. Without that government granted right, it is your natural right to do whatever the hell you want with your description of the game.
That has nothing to do with the government bestowing any monopoly power upon them. It's THEIR game. If you don't like it, go somewhere else.
And you contradict yourself yet again. It's only THEIR game *because* of a government granted monopoly.
This does not make someone a corporate shill, it simply allows them access that they otherwise would have to pay for (or even in some cases could NOT pay for, as evidenced by my experience w/ Press badges at GDC).
I never said that made them corporate shills. The unassailable fact is that all of the major media reporters are corporate shills. Claiming that anybody else who wants to report should emulate them is a very bad idea for that reason.
Re:"In Soviet America"? Please. (Score:2, Insightful)
That's very similar to the question the RIAA is dealing with, as you alluded to in your post.
Business models will have to change, and it will result in less profits for the sporting organizations. But they'll fight it off as long as they can.
- RG>