Media scrum before a Denver, Kansas City NFL game last year.
Sports Leagues Impose
More Rules on Coverage
By ADAM THOMPSON
July 16, 2007; Page B1The overlords of big-time sports and reporters have battled for nearly as long as they've needed each other. In 1938, baseball's Pittsburgh Pirates successfully sued a radio station that placed staffers outside Forbes Field to peek in and broadcast an unauthorized play-by-play of a game.
For all the tension, the two sides had a symbiotic relationship. Publicity sold tickets and access sold papers and boosted ratings.
But with teams, leagues and other sports organizations stepping ever more boldly into the media business themselves, the balance has changed. Sports entities, flush with television cash, are exerting more control over access, and reporters say their ability to provide fans with critical, unfettered analysis has been hampered along the way. The still-murky definition of what constitutes Internet journalism complicates the debate further.
The National Football League, the superpower of all sports organizations, recently imposed a new rule limiting media outlets to 45 seconds of online audio or video footage with league or team personnel per day on NFL property. Further, the league requires media Web sites to remove such footage after 24 hours and always include links to the Web sites of pertinent teams and nfl.com. Those sites can show as much footage as they please, but no fan would consider them a destination for negative news like a player's arrest or drug suspension. This could force many papers to change their practices: the Miami Herald, for instance, last year streamed five or six two-to-three minute interviews after Miami Dolphins games, posted an additional one or two of that length per day during the week and streamed all of ex-coach Nick Saban's Monday press conferences, according to ????utive sports editor Jorge Rojas.
NFL officials say they welcome independent coverage of their 32 teams. But having made $170 million in online revenue in the fiscal year ended March 31 -- up over 17% from the previous fiscal year -- and with a young cable network to nurture, the league has plenty of incentive to limit the newspapers, TV and radio stations that cover it. And it can set its own rules: anyone not abiding by its media policies can have their credentials revoked without legal repercussions.
The owners can do that for a simple reason: They're owners. "It's our facility," says Karl Swanson, spokesman for the Washington Redskins, a team viewed by the press as particularly hard-line on this issue. Along with the NFL's new rules, the team will maintain its policy of not allowing print reporters to record Web video footage. The Redskins also battled with the Washington Post in 2005 after the paper twice posted about 400 photos -- about five shots per play -- in near real-time during games.
"If you'd cut 'em up like a kid and flipped through them like a book, you'd have a video," says Mr. Swanson, noting that the rule is meant to protect the league's network television partners from competition. The NFL reminded the Post that it had gone well beyond the 10 to 12 in-game photos it was permitted to upload. The paper complied after that discussion.
"In 25 years of working with sports it's the first time anybody ever complained about too much coverage," says Washington Post assistant managing editor for sports Emilio Garcia-Ruiz.
The NFL hastens to point out that it has loosened some of its rules. Assistant coaches can no longer be barred from giving interviews, and players must talk to the press at least once a week. Reporters may talk endlessly about football online, as long as no NFL personnel are involved beyond the daily dose of 45 seconds. It says television stations have long complied with limits keeping them to a total of six minutes of news footage on game days and two minutes other days. The NFL also hasn't put any limits on Webcasts of interviews done off league or team property (though in reality such interviews are often hard to come by).
But some of the NFL's other actions have horrified Alex Marvez, president of the Pro Football Writers Association and a South Florida Sun-Sentinel reporter. He winces at the new rule requiring photographers to wear red vests with small Canon and Reebok logos. Mr. Marvez calls the idea of using working press members as advertising vehicles "really alarming." Neither company is paying a specific fee for the vests, but Canon Inc. is an official sponsor of the league (it pays a rights fee to be associated with the NFL) and Reebok International Ltd., owned by Adidas AG, is a league licensee (it makes merchandise with NFL logos, including jerseys, pants and photo vests).
Still, media members know they must pick their battles. Naomi Halperin, photo editor of the Morning Call in Allentown, Pa., and president of the Associated Press Photo Managers, says vest logos are the least of her problems. She was taken aback when, before June's Pocono 500 auto race, she was asked for the first time to sign a credential application agreeing that Nascar would own all images captured at the event. She pushed back and received press passes without hassle.
"We want to maintain control of our images. We certainly don't want to see our images in ads," Ms. Halperin says. A Nascar spokesman says the organization has had the policy for "years and years," and has never interfered with a newspaper's editorial decisions. The NFL and Major League Baseball both consider any images recorded on their leagues' sites as property of the media organization that produces them.
That incident echoes a battle between the Ladies Professional Golf Association and photographers resisting the organization's assertion that it had broad rights to re-use photos shot at a 2006 tournament in Hawaii without permission of the organizations that took the pictures. After the AP and local papers boycotted the first day of the event, the LPGA relented.
Other recent skirmishes abound. This month, Major League Baseball forced ESPN to remove its in-stadium all-star game studio set, claiming the network ignored an embargo announcing the game's rosters that was meant to drive viewers to a TBS show. The National Collegiate Athletic Association drew attention last month after ejecting a reporter from the Courier-Journal of Louisville, Ky., from a postseason baseball game for giving away too many game details in his blog. (The NCAA later relented and gave the Courier-Journal credentials for the College World Series.)
As for the NFL's new Web rules, league ????utives say they are open to adjustments, but only after they see the rules in practice. They say they want coverage, but within their parameters.
"To the extent that we've got widespread compliance problems, that's an indication this isn't working. To the extent that coverage gets less, that's an indication this isn't working," says Frank Hawkins, the NFL's senior vice president of business affairs. But the league will dispatch a group of spot-checkers to patrol the Web, and those on both sides of the debate can envision a media member losing his or her credential this year over this dispute.
Philadelphia Inquirer sports editor Jim Jenks just finished a term as president of the AP Sports Editors but has continued representing the group in talks with the NFL. He hopes to avoid any lost credentials and keep open a dialogue that allows for more exceptions. For instance, he wonders why a coach's weekly formal press conference couldn't be streamed by all, and argues that such events wouldn't take place without the reporters who ask the questions.
But Mr. Jenks and his colleagues have little leverage. While the NFL is flush with money, newspapers are having a tough time keeping readers these days. "So many of us are just trying to hold on to what we have," Mr. Marvez says. League spokesman Greg Aiello notes, "There are so many other access points, so many other places fans can go to get NFL information these days."
Write to Adam Thompson at adam.thompson@wsj.com
