Illinois photogs denied field credentials

I think PoO took one Constitutional law class too many.

 

Nah, I just read the amendment.

 

PoO, the IHSA is a private association of public and private schools. It can make its own rules. It does. Someone can take it to court. Sometimes the IHSA wins. Sometimes (notably in a wrestling tournament-related case maybe a decade ago) it loses. But no constitutional amendment applies here.

 

I agree no constitutional right are being violated. Just a very fine display of douchebaggery on the IHSA's part. The name Marty Hickman doesn't play so well in Illinois newsrooms these days. And for good reason.

 

The bottom line argument here is whether a photojournalist has the right to sell individual photos from an event IN ADDITION TO those that are published in the news reporting process. The IHSA has pulled credentials because it doesn't think so. Newspapers disagree. The courts will make the final determination. To the IHSA's credit, the line had to be drawn somewhere. If you've read my previous posts, I think the line should have been drawn by default as the separation point between true photojournalists and the people who show up at almost every school looking to make a fast buck by taking umpteen photos of Little Tommy.

My feeling is that all photos taken by a photojournalist are used for profit. So it's really splitting hairs to say that publishing them on a Web site or on a newspaper page equals news but making individual prints isn't news. What if Joe Blow is on the front of the sports section catching a touchdown pass? Wouldn't the IHSA's position be that publishing it on the front page is okay but that making a print and selling it to the kid's mom is off limits? Seems awfully silly.

As for these state associations being private, I'm not sure it's that black-and-white. Clearly, they are largely funded via taxpayer dollars funneled through public institutions. While they may be structured as private organizations, there's not a damned thing about them that's private. Without the involvement of government-run schools, they wouldn't exist. You might say that they're simply contracted by the schools to run the sports programs. There's probably lots of case law regarding whether a contracted entity hired by a government institution is free to ignore constitutional rights. I don't claim to know the answer, but surely the attorneys are looking at that.

 

I think that's the sticking point right there. The argument could definitely be made that it ISN'T splitting hairs.

 

The Supreme Court has already ruled that state high school assocations are "state actors." See Brentwood Academy vs. Tennessee.

 

We've had this discussion three or four times in the past year, and there still are people who refuse to grasp the basic issue at play.

Papers that want to sell every print their photographer takes -- I'm talking about ones not published in the newspaper -- deserve to have credentials yanked, unless they wanna play by state association rules.

In that case, they are not providing news coverage. They are acting as a private photography service.

If they want to sell reprints of pictures that ran in the paper, I have no problem with that.

But with the ability now to take thousands of shots at one game, and sell photos of every second of every game, it's gone beyond reprints and into the business of photo sales.

 

Yes. What wicked said.

 

Does anyone know of any TV entities that sell video? I don't know of any.

 

That dog won't hunt if they get indirect financial support from the public school systems.