A Sri Lankan newspaper chose a bold way to illustrate how a media rights dispute between Cricket Australia and international news agencies is hurting its coverage.Next to the report, in a space where a match photo would usually go, was a black figure in the shape of a batsman playing a stroke. “This space is dedicated to what would have been an action picture of the Test match in progress in Brisbane,” the caption read. “The black figure is courtesy Cricket Australia.”The key elements of the dispute are Cricket Australia’s insistence on a license fee for photographs of its events, curbs on the distribution of news and images to online publishers and assertion of an intellectual property interest in stories and photos produced by journalists at its events.The news agencies are refusing to pay the unprecedented license fee. The AP’s associate general counsel, Dave Tomlin, said news agencies did not pay news sources for the right to hear or tell their stories, and do not pay organisers of newsworthy events for the right to cover them. “When we start doing that, both we and our sources can kiss our credibility goodbye,” he said.
