Newhouse School of Communications
Technology & Touchdowns
October 6, 2009
L to R: Bob Costas, NBC; John Keib, Time Warner; Mickey Osterreicher, NPPA
by Deaundra Cash
The Tully Center for Free Speech held three fall seminars covering current legal issues related to sports coverage, Internet censorship and deceptive advertising on Friday October 2 at the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. Panelists from across the country updated students on the law and various legal arguments on each topic.
The featured seminar of the day, “When Rights Collide: Sports Coverage vs. Branding”, included panelists Bob Costas 74, sportscaster with NBC; John Keib, president of residential services for the Northeast/national region of Time Warner Cable; and Mickey Osterreicher, general counsel with the National Press Photographers. The panel discussed the increasing legal restrictions placed on journalists, videographers and photographers covering sports as networks, pro teams and universities.
Due to the advances of technology via blogs, twitter and direct audio/video capture set wirelessly to websites, entities have become more interested in covering live action sports. When large media companies own the property rights of networks, teams and universities and the copyrights to cover sporting events, from video to photos, what legal restrictions do sports journalists have to follow in order to seek protection of their brands and contract for exclusive rights?
“Rather than this being a first amendment issue these are largely copyright issues and at this point,issues that need to be litigated to figure out who is entitled to do what to whom,” Professor David Rubin, facilitator for the panel and professor of communications, said.
As a representative of a cable network, Keib said, “We would be assuming the linear rights to the broadcast of that event in order to put it on tv.” Videographers can then cover the event under those rights. “For the vast majority of the things they (journalists) could possibly do, we certainly wouldn’t have an issue with most of them,” he continued. “The problem is if someone is sitting with a handheld camera and tries to stream live video.”
Osterreicher explained the terms and conditions journalists, especially photographers, have to abide by when posting event information to the internet. “What I would be able to do would depend on what I had agreed to by signing the terms and conditions.” Web journalists have to know whether they give up their copyrights when signing this agreement. If they don’t agree to these terms, Osterreicher said, “There’s enough outlet, enough bandwidth, enough outlets for publicity that they would say ‘fine, don’t come.’”
Costas did not feel like NBC has much to worry about legally because of the prestige of the network and the preference that people would because of their extensive coverage of sports events. “The value of NBC brings people to watch our events,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if the results get out. There is no threat from people in the stands taking picture and videos.”
