There's an interesting dispute going on in America right now over "who owns the news". The governing bodies for Major League Baseball and the National Football League, among others, have drawn up new rules for sports coverage which the traditional news media are up in arms about. It's a heady mix over the use of audio and video clips on newspaper web sites, and access for bloggers.

One point the sports teams have which I sympathise with is that some coverage is tantamount to event broadcasting, rather than reporting and commentary after the event. For example, where does it leave tv stations if they pay huge fees for live and repeat broadcast rights only to see newspapers making videos available free of charge on-line? That's perhaps why at college level athletics in America, accredited bloggers are restricted to three posts per quarter and one at half-time for water polo, and ten posts per day or session for fencing or bowling. In other words, a continuous, live, blog is the same as a live commentary and I can see that point.

That to me is a significant point of difference between the two sides because the news media are arguing that their activities are about news gathering while the sports bodies are arguing it is about news broadcasting. However, while I instinctively side with the bloggers and freedom of speech and all that, I can hardly accept that a Man United versus Liverpool football match is a "news broadcast" by any stretch of the imagination. It is an event, and that event is owned by those who staged it, it seems to me, whether it is a sports event or a pop concert or even an art exhibition. The news media shouldn't have the right to barge in, declare it to be news, and promptly broadcast it - at a profit to themselves - to the world.

That doesn't, however, extend to events off the pitch, which the sports bodies want to see included. What players and managers say and do off the field of play is not part of a sports event and cannot therefore be considered the property of the sports teams. That is news and the news media are entitled to collect it and broadcast it. The sports bodies should have an interest in enabling that, to promote public interest in their sports, including by bloggers. That any team should try to exclude a blogger from the press corps, as one team has tried to do, is absurd.

Both sides, the teams and the media, need each other. They both need to serve the fans who one way or another pay the bills. The teams need a fan base to command a high price for tv coverage, and ticket and merchandise sales. The news media need those same fans to sell newspapers to or earn advertising revenue on their web sites from.

You can read an article in the New York Times about it here
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