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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."'"
What a doozy of a sensationalistic story. The "See any serious problems with this story?" link took on a whole new meaning.
First, let's get this out of the way: this is the NCAA, not the government.
Second, let's go to TFA:
The Courier-Journal said that the University of Louisville sent out a memo from NCAA manager of broadcasting Jeramy Michiaels, prior to Friday's game. The memo said, in essence, that no blogging was allowed during the game.
Check.
But Bennett had not been approached after live-blogging previous games in the playoffs.
Oh, so then it must be okay? Talk about a non-story. The guy just got caught violating a policy that he knew about and probably even agreed to as a person with press credentials.
This was a person who wasn't removed for "blogging", but a person with press credentials who was providing live coverage of the event.
The NCAA naturally wants to control access to live (and recorded) broadcasts of games (and currently has the legal right to do so), whether they be video, audio, or even text. How or why is "blogging" magically different or protected?
Could someone set up a radio broadcast station from within an NCAA event without arranging the necessary licensing with the teams and the NCAA? Could someone do the same with a cell phone and broadcast it to a pirate radio station? Sure. The answer is you can do it if you don't get caught. Conspiracy theorists will wail about how it's all about money and control, just another example of censorship in our corporate/government-controlled police state society, ignoring any and all other aspects to order and law in a civil society, and the fact that, believe it or not, economic factors actually do come into play when a lot of money is involved in producing something.
Do you think ESPN, CNNSI, CBS and other sports news aggregators get the content for their live play-by-play event services on web sites and mobile devices for free? Hell no. The "information wants to be free" and "everything is okay when it's done using technology, but only when it's the people and not corporations or government" arguments can be saved for elsewhere.
What if I want to set up a network of personnel across the country who live-blog every NCAA sporting event, and broadcast it on a web site. Maybe one with ads. And then I pay people to live blog for me. At every event. And maybe all of those people can have computers with cameras, and stream video as well. Well, why not? I should be able to do that, right? No? Where do you draw the line?
If everyone wants to have bloggers be considered legitimate "journalists" no matter who they are, they're going to have to play by the same rules everyone else does, too. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Sure, sure, he's just "reporting on the event" with "newer technology" than the old antiquated dinosaurs, right? Wrong. He's providing some semblance of live coverage of the event, and that's something other content providers have to license and pay for.
If you're live-broadcasting an event, the NCAA is likely to get its feathers ruffled, and not allow you to do it. This is not the government, and if you think it's "censorship" or inhibiting free speech or that bloggers are just "journalists", except in more real time, then why don't you get all up in arms about not being able to broadcast the video or audio from the events live or in near realtime, either?
This isn't about "blogging". It's about live/near-live coverage of an event by a person with press credentials - that is another critical point - without having paid to do so, like everyone else who provides such coverage has.
Heck, we got more live updates from the Paris Hilton court hearing on tmz.com than we can get on an NCAA game.
And here I was hoping that the Great Blogger Purge had begun.
A man can dream, though. A man can dream...
End transmission.
This isn't a First Amendment issue in any way, shape, or form. This is an organization not letting an individual participate because he will not abide by their rules. You can kick people out of private events basically at whim, as long as it's not on the grounds of race, religion, sex, etc. This guy was given a press pass (ie he didn't even pay to get in!), and he got kicked out for doing something they didn't like.
That said, it's tough to say whether this was a bad move or not. In one way, this blogger is competing with the radio/tv broadcasts. On the other hand, it's some no-name newspaper that probably takes very little attention away, and kicking him out is only going to generate bad press.
Given that a large percentage of NCAA schools are publicly funded, and the NCAA harps ad nauseam about their role in developing successful students, it would seem to follow that it's mostly a taxpayer-funded educational institution. I can understand them saying "you can't redistribute our coverage without our consent", but I see no way they can justify saying "you can't distribute your own take on the events you're watching that you funded out of your own wallet".
Want to retain all rights to an event's coverage? Well, good luck with that, but don't spend my tax dollars enforcing it.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
It's nothing but crumpled porno and Ayn Rand.
Wrong.
NCAA policy expressly prohibits live-blogging/coverage of the game by press, he was informed of it in advance, he had press credentials; he violated the policy anyway, got caught, and got removed.
End of story.
And no, there is no first amendment question here at all, government or no. And if there is, it's the same for any other live coverage of an event by any mechanism. I know the whole "Congress shall pass no law" thing is pesky, but yet there it is. I guess that's why your argument is always best served by trying to link government and corporate interests, making corporate "censorship" a de facto first amendment issue.
This isn't some journalist innocently trying to report the game with new technology that bucks a business model, or a guy who might want to tell his buddies about the game via computer. It's someone who wants to be considered a journalist, with journalist credentials, violating the policy set forth by the issuer of said credentials.
Not much more to say about it.
Does/can the NCAA stop you from blogging about a game, as it happens, based purely on what you see being broadcast on TV? (i.e., from home) Not trying to make a point, just curious.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
But here's the thing with this story.
Whether or not someone can blog an event depends on some things. If it's an NCAA event (as this game was), it's the NCAA's call. As far as I know, the NCAA prohibits blogging at all of its championship events, including the College World Series and the Superregionals. It sucks, because even I as an institutional representative can't blog about my team, but as several other posters have said, there are a lot of rights and a lot of cash floating out there, between TV and radio, as well as livestats on the web and the ad revenues it generates. Monetarily, the NCAA is doing itself a favor, as well as the institutions, by restricting this.
Louisville WAS NOT restricting the blogging - the NCAA was. The blogger may have gotten away with it at the basketball, probably because that event is so huge and unwieldy from a media standpoint they couldn't track him down/know he was doing it, and the Orange Bowl isn't an NCAA event.
Most institutions don't care. I don't care. Hell, I WANT people blogging my school because it means we're getting that much more exposure. 17 year-olds aren't reading about us in the newspaper - they're reading blogs, and they're going to hear about us that way. I blog my own events during the regular season, but unfortunately, once its NCAA time, it goes out the window.
And don't do the whole "it's a state-funded school" thing - 90% of these schools don't see a dime of state money for athletics. Their athletic depts. are set up as corporations that generate their own revenue and are mostly driven by student tuition activities fees, football, men's basketball and corporate and private donors.
So, in conclusion, the NCAA is perfectly within their rights to restrict this, even though it's Evil and all that.
Also, to the earlier poster who said that ESPN, CBS, etc. pay to get their live statistic game feeds - not true. Most all of the scores and stats you see on ESPN and CBS come directly from the institutions themselves. For example, if I'm the statistician for a football game, we send a live stat XML feed to our web provider, and it also gets FTP'd straight to ESPN. For schools that use the CSTV service, it goes to CBS Sportsline (which owns CSTV). For games not feeding stats like that, there are a few companies that will actually call the press row line (or, if they feel like being a pain in my ass, my cell phone) and ask for the score, high scorers, etc. ESPN owns the largest of these, SportsTicker.