Media Pundit

LostRemote:

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, the NFL is now restricting local news sites from posting video of postgame press conferences or locker room interviews. “Video from our stadiums on game day is one of our most valuable assets, including video of our people, players, coaches talking about the game,” said Greg Aiello, the NFL’s vice president for public relations. “The policy is designed to ensure that our rights holders, who have paid for access to that asset, receive the value they’ve paid for.” The new rule applies to game day, not to press conferences during the week. Of course, journalists are livid. “There is a smell here,” said the Poynter Institute’s Bob Steele, “and it gives the impression that the NFL and the teams are more interested in their own financial protection than they are helping the public understand what goes on in the field with the players in the games.” Well, I think it’s obviously the case, isn’t it? Meanwhile, the Washington Post and the Associated Press — with their lawyers — plan to ask new NFL commissioner Roger Goodell to reverse the new restriction.

This is a damn shame. Unfortunately, the only way the NFL will reconsider this is if they start losing revenue as a direct result. This is not likely to happen, or at least, not in a way in which the correlation can be verified. It seems to me though that the NFL would be smart to realize that football fans love pre and post-game interviews. If they want to increase the value of their product, they might want to pay more attention to the desires of their consumers.

From a journalistic point of view it is just rotten. Anything that decreases the access that reporters and journalists have to the stories they are covering is a bad thing and will have negative impacts on the coverage.

Posted by JN on 10.05.2006 at 8:28 PM | Permalink