The Hindu : Sport / Cricket : Getting the message across

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Tuesday, Nov 13, 2007
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Getting the message across

Colombo: A Sri Lankan newspaper chose a bold way to illustrate how a media rights dispute between Cricket Australia and the major international news agencies is hurting its coverage of the series.

With its national squad in Brisbane for the first Test against the world’s top-ranked team, Sri Lanka’s Sunday Times would usually rely on The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse to supply images.

But, with the agencies locked out of the match over a dispute involving the terms and conditions of accreditation, the paper carried only a three-column report supplied by the British Broadcasting Corp.

Next to the report, in a space where a match photo would usually go, was a black figure in the shape of a batsman playing a stroke.

“This space is dedicated to what would have been an action picture of the Test match in progress in Brisbane,” the caption read. “The black figure is courtesy Cricket Australia.”

The key elements of the dispute are Cricket Australia’s insistence on a licence fee for photographs of its events, curbs on the distribution of news and images to online publishers, and assertion of an intellectual property interest in stories and photos produced by journalists at its events.

The news agencies are refusing to pay the unprecedented licence fee.

The AP’s associate general counsel, Dave Tomlin, said the news agencies did not pay news sources for the right to hear or tell their stories, and do not pay organisers of newsworthy events for the right to cover them. “When we start doing that, both we and our sources can kiss our credibility goodbye,” he said.

The International Cricket Council has asked for the matter to be resolved quickly, while Sri Lankan cricket authorities have written to their Australian counterparts. — AP

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