By Donald R. Winslow
DURHAM, NC (March 27, 2008) - National Press Photographers Association president Tony Overman today filed another written complaint with Major League Baseball's commissioner Allan H. (Bud) Selig over MLB's revised terms and conditions for credentials for the 2008 season, and addressed the issue of whether MLB intends to integrate into their credential agreement some of the National Football League's credential rules that apply to audio, video, and photos.
Overman also told Selig that he's advising NPPA members who need to sign MLB's credential agreements in order to do their job covering games as the season opens this week to sign the agreement "under duress."
"It appears that Major League Baseball is no longer satisfied to have a monopoly on the game itself but now wishes to maximize its profits by controlling the words, sounds and images that come from those games," Overman wrote to Selig.
"It is not enough that MLB.com and MLB.TV now compete with traditional news organizations but now, through the use of the credentialing process, are attempting to create another type of monopoly by illegally limiting the coverage and content of the news."
NPPA's response today is in reaction to MLB's revised terms and conditions for 2008 season credentials, in which NPPA still objects to:
• Capping the number of photos and running time of post-game online video or audio.
• Establishing a "take down" time for audio, video and photo "galleries or collections" and restricting the number of such galleries.
• Prohibiting changing the text of an article accompanied by photos in order to continue to post such photos.
• Restricting the online use of photographs to “the flagship news reporting Web site or the Bearer;” and further requiring that said website may not “display any Bearer identification other than that primarily and regularly used to identify the Flagship News Web site.”
• Meddling into editorial discretion by reference to the “thematic” use of photographs in retrospective or historical coverage.
"The 2008 MLB Terms and Conditions of Credentials constitute a blatant act of overreaching into the operation and purpose of a free and unfettered press and interfere with the gathering and dissemination of news by individual photojournalists and the organizations they work for," Overman said.
Overman urges NPPA members who need to sign MLB's credential agreement to do so only "under duress." He wrote to Selig,"Until such time as this matter is resolved to the mutual satisfaction of all parties we will advise our members to indicate that they are signing the 2008 credentialing agreement under duress. We strongly believe that the 2001-2007 Credential Terms and Conditions previously agreed to remain valid and continue to govern the coverage of the 2008 season."
As for MLB adopting some of the NFL's guidelines, Overman wrote: "It has come to our attention that there is a proposal to integrate some of the provisions included in the NFL media guidelines for online audio, video and photos into the 2008 MLB terms and conditions. We believe that this might be a good starting point for a workable compromise given that the season openers are only a few days away but the NPPA is still concerned that audio-video terms are still too restrictive."
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