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."'"

Comments

"In Soviet America"? Please.

[daveschroeder]

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.

Re:"In Soviet America"? Please.

[AaxelB]

I think you may have just started and ended the entirety of the possible (intelligent) debate on this topic single-handedly in the first post.

Bravo. My hat is off to you.

Re:"In Soviet America"? Please.

[MollyB]

What will happen when technology allows any attendee at any function to transmit information (multimedia, for example) to anywhere s/he wants to?
I think our business models are in for a tough shakeout. Sidenote: the lawyers will make money either way...

Re:"In Soviet America"? Please.

[Chibi Merrow]

there is stll the debate about whether or not scuttlemonkey is incompetent for posting such a pointless and easily-refuted article.

Is that really debatable?

Re:"In Soviet America"? Please.

[steveshaw]

Thanks for your thoughtful response as well. I always enjoy reading your posts.

The first amendment applies manifestly to the federal government, even if it can be extended to states.

The Constitutional issue of whether the 1st Amendment applies to the states, and state universities in particular, is absolutely black-and-white under current jurisprudence. It does.

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.

If he is a valid member of the press, whose primary purpose is reporting on (rather than retransmitting) the event, then it becomes a First Amendment issue. You cannot license the terms by which the press utilizes their First Amendment prerogative. The issue becomes whether, by "live blogging" the event, he was engaged in an impermissible rebroadcast rather than, for lack of a better word, "journalism." As with most legal issues, it is open to interpretation, which was my overriding point: the blogger may well have a case.

The NCAA isn't even a quasi-governmental agency. It's a private association.

While the Supreme Court held that the NCAA was not a state actor in NCAA v. Tarkanian, 488 U.S. 179 (1988), that holding is limited to the facts of that case, which are manifestly different than here. I submit that it is an open question. You may indeed be right, but I tend to fall on the other side of the argument.

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.

I have no doubt that it has, although I would be interested in the line of cases. This is not a retransmission, however, which carries particular legal significance. I submit it is an open question whether or not his "journalistic transformation" of the events creates a First Amendment issue. Would your analysis be different if he had purchased a ticket and sat down to watch the game with the public, laptop in hand?

ObParis

[michaelmalak]

Heck, we got more live updates from the Paris Hilton court hearing on tmz.com than we can get on an NCAA game.

Sigh

[evil agent]

And here I was hoping that the Great Blogger Purge had begun.

A man can dream, though. A man can dream...

First Amendment my ass

[MalleusEBHC]

In its article, the Courier-Journal quoted its executive editor, Bennie Ivory, as saying, "It's clearly a First Amendment issue. This is part of the evolution of how we present the news to our readers. It's what we did during the Orange Bowl. It's what we did during the NCAA basketball tournament. It's what we do."

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.

In other news:

[IthnkImParanoid]

A website funded mostly by advertisements that is therefore immune to the temptation to sensationalize stories is reporting that a sports talk show host from WSHT was recently ejected from a meaningless sports event for calling the game with a HAM radio.

According to WSHT, host Johnson Jones was approached by NCAA officials right before they stop selling beer and all the fun is gone in a game between the University of Lousville and Oklahoma State, and was told that calling the game '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, before we employ more (parenthesis) and 'nested "quo't'es" at you in a "vicious"' (manner)."'

Clearly, this is a sign our democratic meritocracy has finally collapsed under the weight of the jack booted thugs from college sporting events. The arguments from the N[azi]CAA that they have a right to revoke the press pass they gave him because he's competing with their services are obviously thinly veiled lies. The end of the world will follow shortly.

Re:Fair enough - tax refunds?

[Chibi Merrow]

I'm pretty sure the primary source of NCAA funding isn't taxes, but in fact from licensing, which is why they enforce this sort of thing. News agencies PAY to provide live coverage of events.

Re:-5 Strawman

[UbuntuDupe]

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.

The Real Scoop

[EastCoastSID]

I'm a devout /. reader and also a sports information director at a major university (you've heard of it). My job puts me between the press and the teams - I run our web site, keep statistics, run press conferences, etc. That means I deal with this crap, and the NCAA's retarded rights issues, every day. I'm sure this isn't the first time this has happened, and it won't be the last.

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.