News agencies suspend Australian cricket coverage over online coverage terms

Reuters, Associated Press (AP) and Agence France Presse (AFP) will not cover matches, training sessions and events for cricket in Australia, because of ‘unacceptable accreditation terms’ set out by Cricket Australia, the sport’s governing body in the country.

According to a release from Reuters:

“No text stories, photos or video of any of the training sessions, matches, press conferences or events will be distributed by the international news agencies to media around the world for the first test against New Zealand later this month, and potentially for the South Africa test coming up in December.”

Reuters partner Getty Images will provide images and ‘fulfil their commercial obligations only’ e.g. not providing any editorial of the matches.

Rights organisation the News Media Coalition said the agencies had been in discussions with Cricket Australia for months before rejecting the terms, which featured several restrictions relating to online coverage including:

• Rules on how newspaper websites can be updated
• Veto power for Cricket Australia over which websites and non-sports magazines the agencies are allowed to syndicate content to
• Restrictions affecting the distribution of content to mobile news services

“As in previous instances, this decision [the accreditation terms] compromises our ability to report independently and objectively, and comes at the expense of global fans and sponsors,” said Christoph Pleitgen, global head of News Agency for Thomson Reuters, in the release.

“We would like to resume our timely, premium coverage as quickly as possible, pending a solution to the current situation. However, freedom of the press and protecting the news interests and coverage rights of our global clients are at the core of both our business and Reuters editorial principles, and these must be upheld.”

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Spot the difference: AFP withdraws ‘digitally altered’ missile shot

Agence France-Presse (AFP) has retracted a photo of Iranian missile tests published this morning, stating the image had been ‘apparently digitally altered’ by Iran’s state media, the New York Times’ Lede section reports.

It was too late for the print editions of the LA Times, Financial Times, Chicago Tribune and others, who ran the pic on the front page, and for the BBC, New York Times and Yahoo News websites.

Below - spot the difference between 1) the AFP’s image…

…and 2) an image later obtained by the Associated Press:

According to the Lede’s report, the agency said the fourth missile may have been added to mask a grounded missile that failed to launch during the test.

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Wikileaks site restored by court ruling

Wikileaks - the whistle-blowing website forced offline two weeks ago - has been restored by a US federal court judge, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.

Overuling the closure, Judge Jeffrey White said he was concerned about issues of freedom of speech and the ‘effectiveness of disabling the wikileaks.org domain name’.

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Citizen journalist ’sells’ video for €100,000

A video from French citizen journalism website Citizenside is expected to generate €100,000 (£75,285) of revenue after being sold to Paris Match, the Editors Weblog reports, with a commission rate of between 50 and 75 per cent going to the amateur creator.

The footage from Citizenside, which recently signed a partnership with Agence France-Presse, was of the newsworthy former Société Générale trader Jérôme Kerviel signing a statement at a police station, according to the report.

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