Australians missing out on full sports coverage, media outlets say

From Wikinews, the free news source you can write!

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Australia

Other stories from Australia

• 6 December 2009: Liberal Party of Australia win Bradfield, Higgins by-elections
• 3 December 2009: Wikinews interviews Goronwy Price about the upcoming by-election in the Bradfield electorate of the Australian parliament
• 1 December 2009: Wikinews interviews Stephen Murphy about the upcoming by-election in the Higgins electorate of the Australian parliament
• 23 November 2009: Australian sport may be on the cusp of change
• 22 November 2009: Australian Football League to hold match in China

...More articles here

Location of Australia

To write, edit, start or view other articles on Australia, see the Australia Portal

Footage from the Queensland Roar v Central Coast Mariners A-League football semi final taken by a Wikinews contributor.

Major media outlets have told an Australian senate committee on environment, communications and the arts that Australians are being denied full coverage of sporting events.

They have told the inquiry that major sporting organisations are restricting how photos and text can be used on the internet and other digital media, which is threatening the reporting of sport as news.

Sporting organisations have hit back saying that such online content is a big money earner for them. They say that the money earned from those rights gets invested in grassroots programs.

Australian Associated Press asked the committee to recommend legislation guaranteeing the right of news media cover major sporting events.

"AAP reporting and photography are the lifeblood of news for regional and rural newspapers across the country," Fairfax Media, publisher of The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and a number of regional papers, said in its submission. "Millions of Australians are being prevented from receiving full AAP coverage of major sporting events. When photographs of sport events are privatised, all forms of journalism are vulnerable to such restrictions."

"AAP believes that the most effective way to protect the public interest in receiving news about sporting and related events is to have a legislated provision for right of access for news media," AAP's submission says.

The Australian Football League, in its submission, also argued for legislative amendments, but to the Copyright Act. Their recommendations would see the use of audio-visual, photographic and audio media restricted in the digital domain.

"To avoid protracted disputes with media organisations and to ensure a minimum standard of protection across digital sports news reporting in Australia, AFL believes that the best means of introducing these restrictions is by way of amendments to the Copyright Act or a mandatory industry code," the AFL's submission said.

Wikinews asked the AFL, Football Federation Australia and the Sunshine Coast Daily for comment. The AFL refused to comment until after their submission was formally made to the committee.

Sources

This article features first-hand journalism by Wikinews members. See the collaboration page for more details.

• Australian Associated Press "Australians are being denied full sports coverage by media restrictions". The Australian, April 14, 2009
  

Share this:

This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable. Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators. Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections. Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.