Rugby World Cup Officials Want To Be The Ones Feeding Quick Unlimited News Pictures Game Coverage To Internet Sites, and Not The International News Agencies. It’s FIFA’s Football World Cup All Over Again And We Do Remember What Happened There, Don’t We?

Philip M. Stone March 16, 2007

Organizers of major international sporting events are trying ever more to make a buck from their franchise. Why, they ask, should they allow international news agencies to feed news pictures around the world in seconds to Internet sites, when they could instead provide their own news picture coverage and get all that money?

And since they hold the rights to the games, it’s their playing field. The world’s media, of course, huffs and puffs, threatens law suits, pound their chests as they cry out “freedom of speech”, try and get the politicians involved, and in general just  make life miserable for the organizers until they come to their senses.

 

 

 

This may be one of the last times you see this in print for a while

That’s basically what happened last year with FIFA and the restrictions it tried to impose on the World Cup coverage, and now the organizers of rugby’s world cup are trying it on again for this September’s tournament in France.

In FIFA’s case, as the media yelling got louder and the World Cup got closer one had the distinct impression that FIFA suddenly decided all the fuss wasn’t worth the bother – international agencies could send their pictures around the world and Internet sites could publish them immediately – no two hour restrictions and the like. A slam dunk for the world’s media.

According to the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) that is spearheading the international media protest against proposed media rules by the International Rugby Board (IRB), the IRB wants to impose limitations of five still news pictures per half and two photos if there is extra time to Internet sites, many of which are natural extensions of a newspaper’s multiplatform presentation. Even in print there are restrictions – no superimposing headlines or captions on pictures if they obscure any advertising within the image. And there are limits on audiovisual content for websites and mobile.

To get accreditation to the games, a news organization must accept those limitations. Accept the limitations and then break the rules and you’re gone from game coverage.

“Your position reflects, frankly, a lack of understanding of the meaning of freedom of the press and the nature of the modern news enterprise,” WAN and a coalition of international news agencies wrote to Mike Miller, CEO and General Secretary of the International Rugby Board.

The letter further said, “restrictions imposed by the IRB on the manner in which photographs can be used, whether in print or electronically, as a condition of accreditation, constitute an unacceptable interference in the freedom and independence of the press.”

Now let’s stand back from the rhetoric for a moment. What we have here is a privately owned sporting event. The people who “own” the event are in the business of making money. By placing their proposed restrictions on Internet still pictures coverage they figure they can make some more money from their own Internet site that won’t have numerical limits, and they can make money elsewhere by providing unlimited coverage for a cost. So, it’s not that the coverage won’t be available, it’s a matter of who is providing that coverage and if it doesn’t come from the organizers then what restrictions might be imposed.  That’s a commercial situation.

The courts on both sides of the Atlantic have basically made case law that says owners of such sporting events can indeed impose their own regulations on news coverage. The media certainly doesn’t like that, but that’s what the judges have been saying. When it comes to video there’s no hue and cry. It has long been accepted that rights are sold and those who don’t have video rights right don’t show the game, and the snippets made available after the game are very limited. All the organizers are really trying to do, as they see it, is to extend the video rights “law” to news pictures.

So now let’s come to the freedom of the press issue. There are few things make FTM angrier than when the media itself cries out about freedom of the press when what we are really talking about are commercial business transactions. Hiding behind press freedom to push business considerations may be a clever ploy which gives the politicians a peg to hook onto, but it does not do justice to real freedom of the press issues.

Journalists being killed and threatened throughout the world – that’s a freedom of the press issue; when WAN gives its Golden Pen award to a jailed Chinese journalist and then when the Chinese protest WAN tells them what they can do with their protests, then that’s a courageous freedom of the press issue; telling President Putin to his face at a conference in the Kremlin there should be more Russian press freedom is a real freedom of the press issue; but whether a  Reuters or a Getty can take pictures at will at a privately owned sporting event and pass them along to their commercial clients who pay very good money for such coverage  is a commercial issue, and not freedom of the press.

Not being able to provide such unlimited coverage could well mean the agencies’ service is not so valuable and therefore they get less for that service -- again, a commercial issue, not freedom of the press. That it is not unlimited coverage without restrictions is a commercial complaint; it is not that unlimited, unrestrictive coverage would not be available – it’s just someone else who would have that right. The media needs to be very careful when it throws its beloved “freedom of the press” around so easily.

This was all brought home to this writer some 20 years ago in Finland. This was before Finland was an EC member and when its foreign policy was dependant on not upsetting its Soviet neighbor with whom it shared a 793 mile (1200 kilometer) border. Finland was neutral, certainly very western in its outlook, but it had that big Russian bear sitting on its doorstep and its enlightened foreign policy was not to upset that animal.

This writer had to renegotiate the news picture agreement with Lehtikuva, the private Finnish news picture agency. It was run by a great lady, Patricia Seppälä, who sadly passed away a few years ago. The negotiations were very tough, Reuters wanted a lot more money each month than she was willing to pay and she gave this explanation:

“We sell our picture service to newspapers within Finland at very little cost. They don’t have that much money and it is our way of promoting freedom of the press – making international pictures coverage available at an affordable price, which I believe is very important.”

If she wasn’t going to get much money from selling Reuters pictures, then she didn’t want Reuters charging her a lot of money either. The basic response to that was that what she charged her clients was her business, not Reuters’; we had a value we placed on the service and that was that. Not a fun negotiation; but that commercial consideration she asked for in the name of freedom of the press was one that this writer never forgot and he has often felt that he lost some of his journalistic soul at those discussions.

None of that is intended to mean that the media are not right to protest and to pursue legal and other means so they can operate commercially free and have the ability to make the most money and to provide the most through coverage possible at the Rugby World Cup, but it is a commercial issue which needs to be dealt with in a commercial manner.

Just look at the Rugby World Cup’s sponsors – Heineken, Vediorbis (recruitment), Capgemini (technology and consulting), Orange (telecommunications), Toshiba (computers) and Emirates (Air travel). Apart from their official sponsorship privileges how much unofficial mention of their names do you believe those sponsors are counting on in the world’s media? How many pictures do they expect to see with their name on an ad board in the background or on a player jersey?

Based on previous experience, if the newspapers and the agencies play it smart those sponsors can expect absolutely no promotional coverage.  Starting today, newspapers will crop their pictures to ensure there is no sponsor name present (thus no need for the restriction on headlines or captions covering up a sponsor’s name – those names are not going to appear anyway). News agencies can select those pictures that contain no sponsor showing on a player jersey or on the ad board in the background. In text stories there will be absolutely no mention of any of the sponsors. Whatever PR activities the sponsors get up to in promoting their World Cup activities will not see the light of journalistic day.

Can you imagine how happy Heineken will be when it’s no longer the “Heineken Cup” mentioned in newspapers but rather just “The Rugby Cup” or “the tournament” or such? Copyright lawyers will jump up and down, but does Heineken or the other sponsors really need this nonsense?

The IRB can tell WAN and the international agencies to go fly kites, but when their own sponsors are pounding on the door complaining about such a media boycott – they want the media to be happy, not scowling – and they start questioning the value of the millions spent in sponsorship, then the rugby officials will pay attention. As in all commercial considerations, “Money talks”.

In reality, the sports rights owners may have those picture rights, but is the commercial gain so necessary to take on the media in such a way? The IRB has the “official” web site, it will be visited by millions of visitors, and it really isn’t worth all of this nonsense just to make a few dollars more elsewhere. That’s the realization that FIFA came to, and it is the one that rugby, if it is smart, will come to as well.

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