"The race car driver Alex Zanardi's violent crash in 2001. A preseason basketball fistfight between Rick Fox of the Los Angeles Lakers and Doug Christie of the Sacramento Kings in 2002. The Vancouver Canucks star Todd Bertuzzi's sucker punch of the Colorado Avalanche rookie Steve Moore in a hockey game in March, breaking Mr. Moore's neck and ending his season.
These newsworthy sports events produced some of the most memorable, if grim, photojournalism of the last few years. But the clients of Getty, a growing stock photo agency that also produces a wire service for news organizations, were not offered any photos of the incidents," the New York Times reports.
Getty says it simply didn't have the images, but critics have wondered aloud if the company was more concerned with trying to protect its contracts with the professional sports leagues. The agency counters that it maintains a healthy church-state separation between its commercial and editorial operations, but some news organizations refuse to subscribe to Getty because of the concerns.
"The leagues have tended to give spots to legitimate news organizations," said Kathleen Carroll, senior vice president and executive editor of The Associated Press. "I think the direction you're seeing," she said, "is organizations' seeking to buy access they couldn't get through their news-gathering prowess. I'd be concerned that if the net-cam caught something that was unpleasant to the N.H.L., we'd have a hard time getting the photos. I look forward to being wrong."
(Link via Interactive Narratives)
Posted by aengblom at May 4, 2004 11:33 AM | TrackBack