WAN Finally Issues A Sports Rights Resolution

Philip M. Stone June4, 2008

Finally the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) has issued a resolution condemning the growing tendency of sports organizations to restrict coverage of their events, both in print and digitally.

When such a resolution failed to materialize at last year’s WAN Congress, ftm asked why and the unofficial answer seemed to be there still was not unanimity within the ranks on how to handle the issue.  But in the year that has passed sporting organizations around the world have been ever more heavy-handed in trying to impose press coverage restrictions – there was even a media boycott of the Rugby World Cup in France for a few days until the organizers agreed to lift draconian coverage restrictions and there have been similar boycotts for some cricket coverage.

It’s an issue that WAN has actively fought on the ground, but it is good to see a resolution that brings the issue to the forefront as a major problem that print and new media now faces.

Dominic Young, director of editorial services for News International and leading the News Media Coalition of media companies fighting for media coverage rights, put it in stark terms in a presentation at WAN’s annual Congress  Wednesday. “We are under attack by event organizers.”

In the past year rights owners have tried to control how many pictures appear on web sites, and to impose time delays, they have tried to stop blogs, they have banned mobile coverage, they have told the media they cannot publish coverage that might put the sport in a bad light (so no coverage of a “personal foul”), news agencies have been told they cannot have their own photographer on site and instead must buy pictures from a third party contracted to take pictures … the list goes on and on. And if the media doesn’t agree then accreditation is withheld.

What complicates matters is that the courts on both sides of the Atlantic have basically ruled in several cases that the “owners” of events do have the right to impose coverage restrictions. So the media is now experiencing long drawn-out disputes on how they can provide the kind of coverage they need for their readers, and in the case of news agencies, to their clients. With the type of restrictions now being frequently demanded, the media yells out that press freedom is being violated, whereas the rights holders say they have made commercial deals elsewhere that commit them to limiting coverage that was allowed in the past.

It is very much a commercial matter, but the media has discovered that crying out “press freedom” and boycotting coverage is enough to get the politicians involved and so compromise is usually reached, even if after the last minute – witness the World Cup Rugby where French officials were none too pleased by the ruckus. 

The WAN resolution takes note “with concern that certain sports bodies have lobbied for a change to Intellectual Property law in an attempt to establish statutory rights over editorial coverage of their sports.

WAN condemns these practices as an attack on free access to information and calls on sports organizers to:

• fully recognize the direct contribution a free press makes to public interest in their events and to the value open press coverage gives to event partners such as sponsors.

• fully recognize the right and duty of a free press to report on matters of public interest without interference or imposition of editorial controls.

• abandon their imposition of unilateral and unnecessary rules governing journalist access and activities and to engage in meaningful discussions with publishers and their representative bodies to agree appropriate terms for each event.

WAN urges all media that produce independent, original and timely news content to resist these attacks on press freedoms by:

• raising awareness of the threat to news coverage of important events.

• challenging unnecessary restrictive access rules, issuing public declarations and supporting industry campaigns to ensure delivery of sporting news to the public by the appropriate means, both now and in the future.