News Releases

RTNDA Fights Online Restrictions in Major League Baseball Credentials

WASHINGTON -- The Radio-Television News Directors Association urges Major League Baseball to revise its terms for credentials for the 2008 baseball season. RNTDA argues that the restrictions severely restrict use of game audio and video on news organizations’ websites and therefore harm the editorial activities of electronic journalists.

In a letter to Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig, RTNDA president Barbara Cochran says the credentials are a thinly-veiled attempt to dilute competition from other media to the leagues own promotion via MLB.TV and MLB.com.

The text of the letter follows:

Dear Commissioner Selig:

Like many news organizations, the Radio-Television News Directors Association (RTNDA) found the 2008 MLB Terms and Conditions of Credentials released earlier this year objectionable.  It was our understanding that, after your meetings with our print colleagues, MLB would issue revised credentials responsive to some of the concerns expressed by news outlets.  Therefore, I delayed contacting you on behalf of the electronic journalists who are RTNDA’s members to protest implementation of the credentials as written.  This week, just as the season opened, we received the revised 2008 MLB Terms and Conditions of Credentials.  RTNDA finds them unacceptable. 

For the past seven years, RTNDA’s members have been operating under terms which, while not ideal from our perspective, permitted our members to reasonably cover Major League Baseball and its local clubs.  The revised credentials, however, extend well beyond any reasonable attempt to balance the editorial and business interests of the media and MLB.  RTNDA believes that the terms of the 2008 credentials stand at odds with the principles of a free press, represent an intrusion into the editorial activities of RTNDA’s members, and will constrain local radio and television stations from disseminating objective and newsworthy information about MLB’s constituent teams to listeners and viewers. 

More specifically, among other things, RTNDA objects to the restrictions on the amount of video or audio that can be posted online after a game is over, to the limits on the length of time that audio and video may be posted online, to constraints on coverage of post-game press conferences and interviews with players and other club personnel, to prohibitions against the use of audio or video for retrospective or historic reporting, as well as to restrictions that limit posting to “the flagship news reporting website of the Bearer” which may not “display any Bearer identification other than that primarily and regularly used to identify the Flagship News Website.” 

At their core, the 2008 Credentials are a thinly-veiled attempt to dilute competition from other media to the League’s own promotion of our National Pastime on MLB.TV and MLB.com.  Particularly through their application to the online distribution platforms of the traditional media, which offer additional means for news organizations to provide quality, objective, and in-depth coverage to fans both inside and outside of local communities, MLB’s credentials undermine the ability of electronic journalists to report on baseball, at the expense of the American public. 

Now that the 2008 season has started, we urge MLB to immediately rescind these arbitrary and needless constraints.  In 2001, the League worked with journalists and media organizations to create mutually agreeable language for media credentials that have served all parties well for the past seven seasons.  RTNDA urges MLB either to reinstate these mutually agreed upon credentials, or to immediately sit down with members of the media to arrive at a similarly acceptable solution.  RTNDA would be pleased to assist in facilitating such a meeting. In the interim, MLB should not require journalists, videographers or other members of the media to agree to or sign the 2008 Credentials as currently revised. 

Sincerely yours,
Barbara Cochran

 RTNDA is the world’s largest professional organization devoted exclusively to electronic journalism. RTNDA represents local and network news professionals in broadcasting, cable and other electronic media in more than 30 countries.

###