SPRINGFIELD, IL (April 8, 2008) - The Illinois Press Association and the Illinois High School Association announced today they have reached a settlement agreement in a lawsuit filed over IHSA's attempt to control access to high school championship events and the secondary use by newspapers of images from those tournaments.
"It's over. They can't control how we do business. End of story," IPA executive director Dave Bennett said announcing today's agreement. The court settlement is a binding agreement that is not subject to political or administrative changes, and the court where the case was filed will retain the authority to enforce the settlement agreement.
According to the lawsuit's settlement agreement, newspaper photographers will not be restricted from covering state high school tournament events, and the secondary use of photographs and video from those events will not be regulated by IHSA.
In effect, IHSA has ended up - after fighting it for months - recognizing all of IPA's original complaints and meeting newspapers' and IPA's demands for access and freedom from IHSA-imposed restrictions.
“This is a victory for press freedom and the independent rights of newspapers to cover public events without restriction from government officials,” Bennett said.
The settlement agreement is between the plaintiffs, the IPA along with the State Journal-Register and The Northwest Herald, and the defendant, IHSA. The agreement will be filed in the court where the suit was first entered, in the Circuit Court of the Seventh Judicial Circuit in Sangamon County, IL.
"While this issue began over the secondary use of photographs, the settlement encompasses all platforms that newspapers use to distribute their products," Bennett said.
"I'm pleased that the IPA and the IHSA were able to come to an agreement," IPA president P. Carter Newton said. Newton is also the publisher of The Galena Gazette. "This agreement means that newspapers will continue to cover high school sports as they have for more than a century and, in doing so, provide services that are meaningful to their communities in the coming years."
The terms of the settlement agreement call for the withdrawal of Illinois legislation, introduced in the state's Senate and House in January and already passed in the House, that would prohibit IHSA from enforcing a policy that would have given a private company exclusive rights to sell state championship sporting event photographs.
According to the settlement agreement, sponsors of the legislation in the House and Senate are aware of the agreement and have said that they will withdraw their bills from the legislative calendar if the court approves of the agreement.
The settlement gives Illinois newspaper photographers a guarantee of floor, field, or site-level access to all IHSA sponsored events, and IHSA will assert no authority or control over the production, distribution, or sales of newspaper photographs or videos. The agreement also says that credentials will not have any conditions attached to them regarding what newspapers do with the products they create by covering IHSA events.
IHSA will be responsible for creating "shooting zones" for photographers with credentials, the settlement agreement says, and all will have equal access, but certain IHSA official photographers may have unrestricted access outside the shooting zones in order to create training, promotional, and educational videos and photographs.
On April 1, 2008, the Illinois Senate voted 47-5 in favor of a bill that would prohibit the Illinois High School Association from regulating the use of news photographs and the media's access to public high school competitions. An identical bill was pending in the state's House of Representatives.
"Being able to control our content is a core issue," Newton said after the Senate vote.
At the beginning of the year IHSA tried to deny press photographers access to tournament games unless they signed IHSA's waiver and release that said the newspaper would abide by IHSA's terms. Then in February in a sudden reversal, IHSA said that press photographers with valid credentials could cover the girls state basketball finals in Bloomington, IL, without signing the forms.
Last fall the IHSA refused to allow sideline access to five Illinois newspapers during the state's high school football championships because those newspapers refused to agree not to make their photographs available for sale. Several state newspapers were also denied floor access during state high school wrestling and cheerleading championships.
That's when Illinois lawmakers stepped into the fight over whether the IHSA can prevent newspaper photographers from covering public school academic and sporting championship events games, and whether they can regulate the secondary use of photographs and videos that come from the events.
Illinois Rep. Joseph M. Lyons (D-Chicago) and Sen. James A. DeLeo (D-Chicago) had proposed legislation intended to resolve the conflict and to keep it from happening again. House Bill 4582, if voted on and signed into law, would have provided open access to all competitions, from elementary school to high school levels, including sports and academic activities.
“We’re very grateful to the legislators who helped move negotiations along and pushed our bills forward,” Bennett said. “In particular, Senator DeLeo and Representative Lyons, our lead sponsors, worked hard to move our bills.”
“We had complete confidence in the bills,” Bennett said. “Some of our members would have liked to have passed the legislation. But the settlement agreement really locks down everything we sought.
In November 2007 the IPA, representing Illinois newspapers, sued the IHSA over the issue of access to high school championship events and photo sales. The parties said they were trying to reach an out of court settlement on the issue of "secondary use" of images right up until the end of November, when several Illinois newspapers were surprised to find that their photographers were shut out from the eight championship football games and the title games because IHSA said they were not "in compliance" on the issue of print sales.
In December 2007 the IHSA filed a counter suit in Sangamon County Circuit Court in Springfield asking a judge to declare that IHSA has the exclusive right to sell photographs taken at high school sporting events, and the right to impose limits on how newspapers use photographs, and for permission to restrict newspapers' access to IHSA games if editors and publishers fail to comply with IHSA polices.
The countersuit named IPA, the Peoria Journal Star, The State Register-Journal in Springfield, and The Northwest Herald in Crystal Lake, and asked for at lease $50,000 in damage payments. An IHSA statement issued after the suit was filed said the action was necessary "to bring a definitive resolution" to the dispute.
IHSA had a contract since 2001 with Visual Image Photography Inc. (VIP) of Cedarburg, WI, that granted the commercial photography business "exclusive rights" to take and sell photographs IHSA's state athletic championship games. At the same time, as a condition of receiving a media pass, newspapers were required to sign an agreement limiting their own access and prohibiting the “secondary use” of photographs not printed in the traditional newspaper.
The contract gave IHSA access to VIP's extensive library of sports images for its own promotional use and VIP had the right to sell photographs of athletes and games to parents, boosters, and relatives. In the contract with VIP, IHSA was expected to prevent newspapers from selling their own photographs from IHSA events.
