Staff reporter ejected from NCAA baseball game for "live blogging"
Jun 12 2007
This weekend I got to watch my favorite University's baseball team (University of Louisville) do something it has never done, it won a NCAA baseball Super Regional and has mad its way into the College World Series. Later I found out that a staff reporter from the Courier-Journal was ejected from the game and had his press credentials revoked after the NCAA asked the University to do so or risk not hosting another NCAA baseball event.
The NCAA manager of broadcasting, Jeramy Michiaels, released a memo before the game stating that a blog is a "live representation of the game and that any blog containing action photos or game reports would be prohibited". With the smart-phones, Blackberries and soon to be iPhones with web access, cameras and email; how do they expect to enforce such an unrealistic rule? I can sit at a game with my Blackberry Curve make posts using email, through the web browser, and send photos to a blog or Flickr. Besides the notion that this would be covered under the First Amendment. Michiaels goes on to say that "In essence, no blog entries are permitted between the first pitch and the final out of each game."
According to the NCAA not only can you not blog about these NCAA events, but you cannot provide live internet statistics as those "rights" have been granted to CBS. From a NCAA site "For clarification purposes, a live statistical representation includes play-by-play, score updates, shot charts, updated box scores, photos with captions". With the ruling by a federal judge last year that game and player statistics are not the intellectual property of MLB and that the First Amendment applies, it will be interesting to see how the live blogging and live internet statistics for the NCAA and other sporting events plays out.
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