Paying to cover news not cricket

NEW DELHI, November 13: A dangerous rash is spreading in the world of cricket. Money-minded cricket administrators are putting a price on everything, including pictures of cricket matches, thereby threatening to take the fun out of sports.
Cricket Australia has already decided to charge money from news photo agencies for taking pictures of the ongoing Australia-Sri Lanka series.The agencies have refused to buckle under the blackmail and they have boycotted the series. The sufferer is the cricket fan who has been deprived of pictures of the series.
What’s more alarming is that this move has given some ideas to the BCCI. Asked if the BCCI supported CA, secretary Niranjan Shah told a news agency: "I think so, yes. They are charging only the news agencies. (If) private newspapers like The Times of India representatives go and they use photographs I don’t think they are charging. Agencies are charging every press, so (they) are doing a business. This is what I have understood...the BCCI wants to do the same."
BCCI, in Shah’s words, wants to do the same. This raises the distinct possibility of an agency boycott on the lines of that witnessed during the first Australia-Sri Lanka Test at the Gabba. If agencies succumb to the blackmail and start paying money to cricket boards, they in turn will ask more for the pictures. Look at it any way, there will be fewer pictures of cricket to give joy to the game’s innumerable fans.
BCCI vice-president and marketing committee head Lalit Modi told TOI on Tuesday that "it is not a question of revenue alone". He added: "It’s a copyright issue. If agencies are making money selling images owned by someone else, why shouldn’t they pay for the right to use those images? It’s a new thing, and the ICC has to decide."
The ICC, when contacted, said it had no intention of interfering. "It’s a complex issue but it’s between the respective boards and the media," said Brian Murgatroyd, the ICC’s media and communications manager.
"We hope for an amicable settlement. We’re not on the inside. The BCCI has not yet said they will definitely follow suit, so we don’t want to comment on speculation. But it’s a question of editorial rights, which are not being charged for, and commercial rights. The relationship between any board and the media cuts both ways, so there will be negotiation. Does it amount to selling news? I don’t know about that," he said.
The issue, as framed by CA, centres on copyright issues and intellectual property rights of photographs taken at cricket matches by news agencies such as Reuters, AP and AFP. A new CA accreditation clause specifies that such agencies give up their rights to photographs taken of Australia’s matches and grant them to the Australian board. CA now wants to charge a license fee, allegedly in the range of $5000 for local media organisations and around $10,000 for international agencies, if they wish to continue selling news photographs to clients. CA argues that Australian cricketers and cricket matches organised by them are its ‘property’.
This demand could set a dangerous trend, spill over into other areas, and change sports coverage, or for that matter the coverage of other events, as we know it.
The CA’s argument is flawed and so is BCCI’s intent. Media experts are of the opinion that the high brand value of cricketers and the game has been created by the media’s extensive coverage. To set up obstacles on coverage would, sooner or later, affect the brand value of cricketers and cricket. ‘‘The cricket boards want to kill the golden goose by doing this,’’ said an expert.
The CA’s decision has given birth to a heated and as yet unresolved debate: Should news organisations pay to cover news? And isn’t it pure greed on an organisation’s part to prevent access to basic news coverage unless hefty amounts are paid as "intellectual property rights"?
CA spokesman Peter Young has clarified it was a way of maximising revenue streams. The agencies, however, beg to differ, and CA is drawing some serious flak. Chris Warren, the head of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, a media industry body, has said: "CA is simply being greedy." AFP and Reuters have both said they will not pay to cover news, that they never have, and that it impinges on "impartial and independent coverage".
It’s not agencies alone. Helen Coonan, the Australian communications minister, wants the dispute to end, saying the demand was "not Australian, and not cricket". Many Aussie politicians have termed it an "abuse of power". This isn’t the first time politicians have stepped in: CA’s demand follows directly from an identical dispute at the beginning of the Rugby World Cup in France in September, when the International Rugby Board tried to limit the time of audio-visual footage to three minutes a day. This led to the media banding together and threatening a boycott. Both the French government and the EU got into the act, and the IRB backed out barely 90 minutes before the start of first game.
But the damage, it now appears, had been done then, and the germ of a new revenue-generating idea planted. There’s no denying the fact that such demands could spill over into written content as well, apart from changing the way the Internet functions and is regulated.
So where does that leave cricket? Isn’t it obvious that CA’s idea can only be tried out with established brands, like the Australian team? Would the CA try out this idea with an unknown under-17 squad? No one, not even the ICC, knows as yet if CA will make similar demands of the media when India tour Australia next month.