Category: Access & Censorship

  • Editorial Photographers UK | Injured photographer wins settlement, costs and apology from Met Police

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    London-based photojournalist Marc Vallée originally brought a private civil action for up to £15,000 against both the police force and its commissioner Sir Ian Blair alleging assault and breaches of the Human Rights Act. Under the terms of the settlement the Metropolitan Police have not accepted any liability.

    Vallée, 39, was hospitalised and left unable to work for a month with back injuries which he alleges resulted from being manhandled by a police officer while covering the Sack Parliament protest in London’s Parliament Square on 9 October 2006.

    Check it out here.

  • Maryland House Panel Kills Cameras In Court Measure

    A bill that would have repealed Maryland’s ban on cameras in court during criminal sentencings was rejected by the Maryland House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.

    Check it out here.

  • Planning to Cover Baseball's Opening Day? Read On…. – Visual Leadership

    under no circumstances may Bearer display any more
    than seven still pictures or photographs of any Game at any time regardless of whether Bearer obtained such pictures or photographs at the Game; (ii) unless such still pictures or photographs of any Game are displayed in connection with an article about or summary of such Game, such still pictures or photographs cannot be displayed for more than seventy-two hours following the conclusion of the respective Game

    Check it out here.

  • The IHSA … and photography from state finals — ChicagoSports.com

    The Chicago Tribune, chicagotribune.com and ChicagoSports.com will not publish news photographs of this weekend’s girls gymnastics and wrestling state finals because of a legal challenge the Tribune, the Illinois Press Association and other state newspapers have filed against the Illinois High School Association.

    Check it out here.

  • Chicago Reader | Hot Type | Shooting for Dollars: The fight over photo rights to high school sporting events involves more than the First Amendment.

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    Lockport came from six runs down to beat Oak Park 8-6, and Banks headed onto the field to take the “jubilation shot”—the photo of ecstatic teenagers hugging and tumbling and screaming. It’s the shot that goes on page one of tomorrow’s paper and into the photo albums of every player on the team.
    But a volunteer from the Illinois High School Association blocked Banks’s way at third base. “She knew who I was and she said, ‘I can’t let you out,’” he says. “I asked why. She said, ‘This is my instruc tion.’” Banks looked around. He spotted the photographer from Visual Image Photo graphy, the firm under contract with the IHSA to take pictures of its major events, heading for the field from the first base side. Banks trotted after him and got his picture.
    Banks also calls the jubilation shot the “money shot,” and that’s not just a metaphor. Papers point out that for 100 years they’ve sold copies of their pictures for a nominal rate to readers seeking mementos. Now a lot of papers have digitized the process—their photographers post pictures and readers order them online. An outside company that handled the order and made the print took a cut and Banks and the Southtown split the balance. Banks says his yearly take was something under $2,000.
    The revenue stream is pretty small—it didn’t come close to sparing the Southtown its recent drastic economies, merging with the Star papers and laying off a lot of people, Banks included. But visit the Web site of what’s now the SouthtownStar and you’ll see the paper means business. “Welcome to Southland Photo Shoppe,” it says. “Your shopping choices range from traditional prints to T-shirts, mugs, computer mouse pads and other items on which our photos are imprinted.” A simple eight-by-ten is $25.

    Check it out here.

  • Playing It Safe in Las Vegas – New York Times

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    “In Vegas, I don’t have to worry about photographers waiting outside my house every day because they can’t wait outside my hotel room,” Spencer Pratt, a star of the MTV reality series “The Hills,” said in early January as he and Heidi Montag, his co-star and girlfriend, posed for photos on a red carpet on the way to an event that they were paid to attend at the Jet nightclub at the Mirage.

    “When we travel here we have bodyguards, there are people with earpieces making sure there aren’t any photos we don’t want, making sure there’s no problems,” Mr. Pratt said. “I’m sure a lot of celebrities come out to Vegas because it’s like a hide-out, it’s a getaway.”

    Indeed, as the city rolled into the year’s biggest betting weekend, the Super Bowl, stars aplenty were expected to be in the nightclubs and sports books. But they were not expecting to be trailed by what Robin Leach, the former host of “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” and the unofficial dean of the Las Vegas celebrity news media, refers to as “wild roaming packs of paparazzi.”

    “All of our photographers are known to the casinos almost as if they’re registered,” said Mr. Leach, who writes the Vegas Luxe Life blog for Las Vegas Magazine. “If a photographer breaks the spirit of the unidentified terms of his access, that’s the last time he gets red carpet or nightclub privileges.”

    Check it out here.

  • Pakistan Kicked Me Out. Others Were Less Lucky. – washingtonpost.com

    The document he’d given me provided no explanation for my expulsion, but I immediately felt that there was some connection to the travels and reporting I had done for a story published two days earlier in the New York Times Magazine, about a dangerous new generation of Taliban in Pakistan. I had spent several months traveling throughout the troubled areas along the border with Afghanistan, including Quetta (in Baluchistan province) and Dera Ismail Khan, Peshawar and Swat (all in the North-West Frontier Province). My visa listed no travel restrictions, and less than a week earlier, President Pervez Musharraf had sat before a roomful of foreign journalists in Islamabad and told them that they could go anywhere they wanted in Pakistan.

    The truth, however, is that foreign journalists are barred from almost half the country; in most cases, their visas are restricted to three cities — Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi. In Baluchistan province, which covers 44 percent of Pakistan and where ethnic nationalists are fighting a low-level insurgency, the government requires prior notification and approval if you want to travel anywhere outside the capital of Quetta. Such permission is rarely given. And the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), where the pro-Taliban militants are strong, are completely off-limits. Musharraf’s government says that journalists are kept out for their own security. But meanwhile, two conflicts go unreported in one of the world’s most vital — and misunderstood — countries.

    Check it out here.

  • PJStar.com – Journal Star News Story

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    No, this dispute is not about high commerce. It is instead about principle. We believe it is within our absolute right to cover, publish and, yes, occasionally even sell, content that we create – particularly from highly public events involving tax-supported institutions and occurring at taxpayer-owned venues.

    It is unfortunate that we are at loggerheads with the IHSA, which has already restricted our photo access to one major state championship event. It’s all related to this dispute. We have never previously viewed the organization as a foe. If anything, quite the opposite is true. Like the IHSA, we believe it’s in all of our best interests to draw attention to and celebrate youth achievement, whether it be on the basketball court, the football field, the concert hall or the scholastic bowl.

    Check it out here.

  • Illinois Battle Continues: After Lawsuits, Now Comes Legislation

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    Illinois lawmakers have joined in the fight over whether the Illinois High School Association can prevent newspaper photographers from covering public school academic and sporting championship events games, and whether they can regulate the secondary use of photographs and videos that come from the events.

    A new state law proposed this week comes in the aftermath of a dispute between the IHSA and the Illinois Press Association, a disagreement that reached a boiling point last November when several Illinois newspapers were prevented from photographing the state’s high school football finals and championship games.

    And now Illinois lawmakers have proposed legislation intended to resolve the current conflict and to keep it from happening again.

    Rep. Joseph M. Lyons (D-Chicago) has introduced House Bill 4582 which, if voted on and signed into law, will provide open access to all competitions, from elementary school to high school levels, including sports and academic activities.

    And Sen. James A. DeLeo (D-Chicago) has agreed to file an identical bill in the other chamber of the Illinois General Assembly.

    Check it out here.

  • Editor Sues Newark Police Over Arrest – via PDNPulse

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    Editor Sues Newark Police Over Arrest

    A newspaper editor on Wednesday sued the Newark Police Department, charging that police had no right to arrest him and demand he not publish photographs from a crime scene.

    The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court, came about two months after the state attorney general found that a Newark police chief violated her directive by questioning the editor and a photographer about their immigration status.

    The incident stems from an incident in September in which a freelance photographer for a weekly newspaper, the Brazilian Voice, discovered a dead body and, along with the newspaper’s editor, reported it to police.

    Here.

  • Colorado Lawmaker May Be Censured For Kicking Photographer

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    Colorado Lawmaker May Be Censured For Kicking Photographer

    Colorado lawmakers introduced the first-ever censure against a fellow lawmaker on Wednesday, accusing Republican Rep. Douglas Bruce of bringing disrepute to fellow lawmakers for kicking a newspaper photographer on the House floor while he was waiting to be sworn in.

    The full House of Representatives could vote on the action against Bruce as early as Thursday. The resolution requires a simple majority from the 65 House members.

    The resolution by Reps. Paul Weissmann, D-Louisville, and Rep. Steve King, D-Grand Junction, says that Bruce deserves to be censured because his conduct “failed to uphold the honor and dignity of the House of Representatives and reflects poorly on the state.” It also criticized Bruce for his failure to apologize for the incident that took place during the House prayer.

    Here.

  • Thomas Hawk's Digital Connection: Seattle Cops James Pitts and David Toner Pwned After Trying to Take Photographer's Camera

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    Check it out:

    Thomas Hawk’s Digital Connection: Seattle Cops James Pitts and David Toner Pwned After Trying to Take Photographer’s Camera

    Pop Photo blogs about the case of amateur photographer Bogdan Mohora who was jailed in Seattle last year after he took photos of police that they didn’t want him to take during an arrest.

    Although Mohora was only briefly detained he pushed the issue and worked with the ACLU to get an $8,000 settlement for his arrest. The two officers involved in the incident James Pitts and David Toner, pictured above, were discilplined with written reprimands for a lack of professionalism and poor exercise of discretion.

  • Telling War Stories

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    Telling War Stories: “Jeff Bundy, a photographer with the Omaha World-Herald, covered a Nebraska Army National Guard unit in Iraq during fall 2005. Bundy said books he has read about Vietnam suggest it was a much easier war to cover simply because of mobility.

    ‘When you talk to those guys, they’d just jump on a Huey, and they go out,’ Bundy said. ‘There was no jumping on a Huey for us. Now you have to do the paperwork and the disclaimers and get yourself on a flight. Because of the way the world has moved, it’s tougher to move throughout the country.’

    And unlike the reporters who covered Vietnam, the journalists embedded with the military in Iraq signed an agreement acknowledging that all comments of military personnel are ‘on the record.’ In Vietnam, reporters made much greater use of unnamed sources.”

  • Cameras PermittedMaybe – Pogue’s Posts – Technology – New York Times Blog

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    Cameras PermittedMaybe – Pogue’s Posts – Technology – New York Times Blog: “Anyway, I brought my new Nikon D80 and my trusty image-stabilized, 18-200 millimeter (11X zoom) lens. This event absolutely screamed out for this camera: three frames per second, 11X zoom, image-stabilized. I was looking forward to getting some truly rockin’ shots, like the ones I’d taken at a monster-truck rally we saw last year in the same arena.

    Amazingly, the guard stopped me at the door. ‘You can’t take that in there,’ he said. ‘Detachable lens.’

    Say what?

    ‘You can bring pocket cameras, but no detachable lenses.’”

  • China: "citizen journalist" beaten to death – Boing Boing

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    China: “citizen journalist” beaten to death – Boing Boing: “Wei Wenhua was beaten to death after he snapped photos of a confrontation on the street between village residents and authorities. His death has sparked controversy in Chinese media, and the blogosphere:

    Wei Wenhua was a model communist and is now a bloggers’ hero — a ‘citizen journalist’ turned martyr. The construction company manager was driving his car when he witnessed an ugly scene: a team of about 50 city inspectors beating villagers who tried to block trucks from unloading trash near their homes.

    Wei took out his cell phone and began taking pictures. The city inspectors saw Wei and then attacked him in a beating that lasted five minutes. By the time it was over, the 41-year-old Wei was slumped unconscious. He was rushed to the hospital but was dead on arrival.”

  • Gang Leader for a Day – Sudhir Venkatesh – Book Review – New York Times

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    Gang Leader for a Day – Sudhir Venkatesh – Book Review – New York Times: “On a hot summer day in 1989, Sudhir Venkatesh, a callow sociology student with a ponytail and tie-dyed T-shirt, walked into one of Chicago’s toughest housing projects, clipboard in hand, ready to ask residents about their lives. Sample question: ‘How does it feel to be black and poor?’ Suggested answers: ‘very bad, somewhat bad, neither bad nor good, somewhat good, very good.’ Actual answers: unprintable.

    Mr. Venkatesh got rid of the clipboard and the questionnaire, but not his fascination with life in the Chicago housing projects. He stuck around, befriended a gang leader and for the next decade lived a curious insider-outsider life at the notorious Robert Taylor Homes on the city’s South Side, an eye-opening experience he documents in the high-octane ‘Gang Leader for a Day.’

    In a bit of bravado Mr. Venkatesh, who now teaches at Columbia, styles himself a ‘rogue sociologist.’ Dissatisfied with opinion surveys and statistical analysis as ways to describe the life of the poor, he reverted to the methods of his predecessors at the University of Chicago, who took an ethnographic approach to the study of hobos, hustlers and politicians. Much like a journalist, he observed, asked questions and drew conclusions as he accumulated raw data.”

  • House kicks up an investigation : Updates : The Rocky Mountain News

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    House kicks up an investigation : Updates : The Rocky Mountain News: “By resolution, the House said: ‘The special committee will investigate the circumstances surrounding the incident that occurred between Rep. Douglas Bruce and a member of the press on the floor of the House of Representatives on Jan. 14, 2008.’

    House Republicans on Monday had condemned Bruce for kicking the photographer and promised a tight rein on their new colleague to ensure such an outburst ‘never happens again.’”

  • Bruce kicks photographer, takes oath : Updates : The Rocky Mountain News

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    Bruce kicks photographer, takes oath : Updates : The Rocky Mountain News: “But his patience snapped as photographers from the Rocky and Denver Post crouched before him to shoot his picture as he stood for the House’s morning prayer.

    Bruce told Rocky photographer Javier Manzano ‘Don’t do that again,’ and then gave him a swift kick in the knee.

    Asked by reporters in his office about the incident, Bruce said his kick was warranted and that he had warned the photographers not to take his picture during the prayer and Pledge of Allegiance.

    ‘In 21 years, I don’t think there has ever been an instance where I had to do something to stop somebody from behaving in such a coarse and disgusting way,’ Bruce said.”

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  • Bjork assaults news photographer – 14 Jan 2008 – Journalism news – NZ Herald

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    Bjork assaults news photographer – 14 Jan 2008 – Journalism news – NZ Herald: “Iceland’s singing and songwriting sensation Bjork attacked a Herald photographer on her arrival at Auckland International Airport yesterday.”

  • Report: Iraqi Government Bans Journalists From Clash Sites

    From Iraqslogger via Editor and Publisher, a report that journalists will be banned from covering violent incidents by the Iraqi government. Among the reasons given by man with a long title Iraqi Interior Ministry Operations Director Brigadier General Abdul Karim Khalaf:

    — To protect journalists from being victims in follow on attacks (insurgents often target first responders).

    — “We do not want evidence disturbed before detectives arrive.”

    — “The respect of human rights by not photographing dead bodies who fall by bombings and other incidents.”

    — “The Ministry does not want to give terrorists information that they achieved their goals.”

    With tongue in cheek regarding the first point, this must be the first government in modern times that’s interested in protecting journalists. Maybe the next step is to ban all journalists from working throughout Iraq “for their own safety.”

    The last point is an interesting one. There is a war of information being fought, and terrorism needs publicity to fan its flames. And that’s why terrorist groups have taken to filming their own operations.

    You can say that desperate times call for desperate measures, but these restrictions will have larger effects than the stated goals. Shutting down the freedom of information over there is either a really bad idea or an illustration of how bad things are in Iraq.

    Links:

    Iraqslogger
    Editor and Publisher