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Blogger Removed From NCAA Game for Blogging
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."'"
Thanks for the thoughtful response.
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.
The first amendment applies manifestly to the federal government, even if it can be extended to states. 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.
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.
The NCAA isn't even a quasi-governmental agency. It's a private association. I'd agree that public universities can be considered quasi-government, albeit state, and that's to what I was referring. I don't pretend that any Constitutional element in this or any other instance is *that* black-and-white; else, we wouldn't have a Supreme Court that can be widely split on Constitutional issues.
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.
But you're taking it further in the other direction. Yeah, I can call my buddies and tell them the score from my cell phone. But providing live coverage to a newspaper's web site with press credentials when you are not licensed to provide such coverage (and other court-tested licenses and restrictions on such broadcasts already exist) crosses a line. Could the line be blurry? Sure. But not for someone with press credentials who was informed that live blogging wasn't permitted.
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.
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. The live scenario has its own set of conditions and restrictions, and doesn't prevent someone from immediately reporting the event after the fact for a newspaper, online service, podcast, or what have you (within the terms of the license). So the point is that the relevant controls that NCAA asserts on its content have already been tested, and blogging is simply a new element that is being treated the same as other mechanisms.
The question "does blogging equal broadcast" has not been answered. Until then, it's a 1st Amendment question.
The question of ANY kind of live coverage of an NCAA event requiring licensing to cover said event, by any mechanism, including "blogging", has already been asked and answered numerous times in the courts. There already are numerous web-based, mobile, paging, datacast, and other textual services that do live or near-live coverage of such events, and they pay for and license the content and right to do so from the rights holder. Also, the blogger is not prohibited from reporting on the event after the fact. The question "does blogging equal broadcast" doesn't have to be answered; any live or near-realtime coverage of the event must be licensed. In this particular scenario, the person was even informed that his specific activity was prohibited.
it's not a first amendment question.
It's a very large private gathering.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
With basketball, I don't believe it was enforced, mostly because it's such a huge event, with such a huge amount of media covering it, that it would've been damn near impossible to do anything about it.
CSTV owns a lot of these rights through their relationship with CBS and TV rights. Others go to niche sites that provide live scoring, like in the case of wrestling or rowing.
You have to realize this - chances are, the game is on radio and TV. That's $$ for the NCAA and the host institution via sale of rights. If you're a commercial station, and you want to broadcast an NCAA game on the radio, you need to purchase those rights. But also, you've got live stats, generally provided by the institution. Those features generally include running commentary, so OF COURSE you want people looking at that (and pumping ad revenue to you) rather than the newspaper's blog. It's competition - schools and the NCAA are media outlets in and of themselves. Every university has its own site that generates a non-trivial amount of revenue (in some cases, a significant amount), and schools are damn well going to do what they need to do to maximize that revenue and pour it back into its programs.
Nobody's pockets are getting lined with gold here. Nobody at the NCAA is getting fat bonuses because bloggers aren't blogging, and people working at the universities sure as hell aren't banking anything off it. These are all non-profit organizations we're talking about here. Schools' sports information departments have been providing statistics, stories, photos, and anything else you can think of for decades to media outlets, for free. A lot of local papers don't even send reporters to cover their smaller colleges anymore, they just write stories based on those press releases.
As I said above, bowl games are NOT NCAA events; blogging would be at the discretion of the individual bowl. The Kentucky Derby is obviously not one either; regular-season collegiate contests don't count either (so if you're a newspaper reporter and want to blog UNC-Duke basketball, and the home school allows it, knock yourself out).
The no-blogging terms are no secret. They're on the back of most NCAA credentials; the others direct credential-holders to the NCAA's terms on its web site. I'm going to guess the wording is on baseball credentials, too.
I hope the NCAA does change its policy, because it ultimately hurts the schools most of all. But for now, there isn't much anybody can do to make them change. It's their party, and they'll invite whoever they please.
the point in TFA was that this blogger had accepted press credentials (usually acceptance of these credentials means you're agreeing to play by the press rules set down by the people giving the credentials) and then violated one of the rules set down (no live coverage). he gets ejected, end of story. the question of how legal/illegal it is to record and broadcast a sporting event is something else entirely.