USA Swimming’s New Media Model Will Be Challenged, Traditional Media Seek Court Action; Exempt Status May Be Challenged

By Brent Rutemiller

PHOENIX, Arizona, April 25. RECENTLY Tim Arango from the New York Times reported that a "dispute has grown lately between the press and organized sports over issues like how reporters cover teams [and] who owns the rights to photographs, audio and video that journalists gather at sports events."

Arango reported that "the explosion of new media, especially with regard to advertising income, has made competitors out of two traditional allies — news media and professional sports.

"At the heart of the issue, which people on both sides alternately describe as a commercial dispute and a First Amendment fight, is a simple question: Who owns sports coverage?"

USA Swimming has entered into this same environment by trying to model its non-profit governance of amateur swimming into a professional sports model.

The struggles that professional sports entities such as Major League Baseball (MLB) are having with the media should serve as a good example of the dangerous landscape that USA Swimming is entering.

According to Arango, "MLB recently issued new rules limiting how the press can use photographs and audio and video clips on web sites. Many organizations and publications, like Hearst, Gannett and Sports Illustrated, have refused to go along with the new rules.

"Sports executives see the issue as pure business, and balk at any suggestion that restrictions are an affront to a free press."

But USA Swimming, as a non-profit, should not be "pure business" and that is where the major league model does not translate as a prototype for USA Swimming.

To further cite Arango's article, here is another portion of his article:

Mike Fannin, the president of the Associated Press Sports Editors and the managing editor for sports and features at the Kansas City Star, said the dispute was the result of traditional news organizations redefining themselves in a changing technological environment.

'Ten years ago newspapers weren't in the world of video and audio,' he said. 'We were in the world of print. The leagues don't have a print product. Their view of this is that we entered their world,' said Fannin.

Phil Bronstein, editor at large for Hearst commented in the article that, 'From our perspective, any arbitrary restrictions on how we use our intellectual property for news coverage is not acceptable. We do know that video as part of our web sites is part of that future.'

The Media Law Resource Center, a group whose members include most major media organizations has commissioned legal research in anticipation of the question of media restrictions going to the courts.

'My view is that this is news gathering, and I look for legal responses to any effort to clamp down on news gathering,' said Sandra Baron, executive director of the Media Law Resource Center. 'What I see is a strident effort by a powerful monopoly to control information. They have a monopoly on the game. Now they want to have a monopoly on the information.'

One tactic being considered is to challenge MLB's antitrust exemption.

'I think we're hitting the ridiculous button here,' said John Cherwa, chair of the legal affairs committee for the Associated Press Sports Editors and the sports projects editor at The Orlando Sentinel. 'We're getting tired of everyone trying to tell us how to do our business.'

USA Swimming's Board of Directors is meeting this weekend to discuss issues surrounding the forming of a USA Swimming for-profit media venture with the Wasserman Media Group. As in the case of the media questioning MLB antitrust exemption, one would think that it would be fair game for the media to also challenge the tax-exempt status of a non-profit organization forming a for-profit media entity or at least the ethics behind it.

Full text of the New York Times article.

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