NFL requires all photographers to wear ad logos. The MLB Channel waits in the wings...

(July 18, 2007) - "The National Football League has passed a new rule for the upcoming season that requires photographers at NFL games to wear

• red vests with Canon and Reebok logos on them,
• and the news is not being very well received by some editors and photography directors..."

"David Shribman, executive editor of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, in the NFL Steelers' hometown, responded to the news today by saying: "We're not going to become walking billboards. I hope that NPPA will challenge this and they have our support."

"In Seattle and at Super Bowl XL in Detroit, we wore bibs that blended into the background," NPPA president Tony Overman said today. "Making the vests red seems to go against previous practice, now making the vests highly visible (and therefore distracting) to everyone from players, officials, and ticket holders to television viewers.

"I think it's extremely unfortunate that the NFL,

• after limiting the number of local video photojournalists on the sidelines (last season), is now attempting to turn them into roving billboards," attorney and former photojournalist Mickey H. Osterreicher said today in Buffalo, NY, where for many years he covered the NFL's Buffalo Bills before becoming a lawyer who specializes in First Amendment and press freedom issues. "I would strongly suggest that any news organization whose photographers are required to wear such vests protest the requirement in the strongest of terms." Osterreicher is also NPPA's general legal counsel."

• From article "New NFL Vest Rule (with Sponsor Logos) Has Some Seeing Red," by Donald R. Winslow, News Photographer Magazine, 7/18/07

Via Poynter.org/Romenesko

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