Re: [Leica] Press access

[Five Senses Productions <fls@5senses.com>]

The ruling, according to your quote, states that police DO NOT have the
right to tell PJs to leave a scene for safety reasons?

If I were to set up a site for, say, traffic accident photography (off the
top of my head), and I did not sell access to it, I would not need a
release from people in the photo?  But if I did sell access to the
images, I would need releases?


At 02:29 AM 4/14/98 -0400, Yods1 wrote:
>	Eric's right about journalists not having special privileges over the public
>per se, but I think I should point out that in Lerserson V. San Diego, the
4th
>District Court of Appeal ruled that "Journalists cannot be ordered away
from a
>dangerous site, or any part of it, simply for their own safety."
>	But in practical terms he's right. They use that excuse all the time and
>don't take no lip. Last year I was arrested in Huntington Beach for
>photographing cops making an arrest. Got a tacit apology from the Chief, but
>they succeeded in preventing me from covering the event, which was a real,
>full-blown news thing. Not some isolated, insignificant arrest.
>	If you're genuinely involved in editorial pursuits, often you can talk your
>local sheriff/police/whatever into issuing you a press pass, but you might
>have to do some convincing if you're with a medium they're not familiar
with. 
>	That will help in some pursuits, though technically Joe Citizen should be
>able to enjoy all the privileges of the press. Including photographing people
>in public places. And you don't need permission or a signed release of any
>kind unless you use it for commercial pursuits. That news organizations are
>also businesses is an area the courts have seldom addressed, though I could
>see it coming into play before long now that the media has pretty much
>abandoned pretenses of acting with the good of the public at heart. So
much of
>the stuff that used to be news is now presented in entertainment format that
>you could almost consider the public unpaid actors and extras.
>	That's a bit of an exaggeration of course but editorially speaking, anything
>in the public realm is fair game, at the moment. 
>	I wonder if television in Quebec will be held to the same standards as
>newspapers and magazines--as usual, I doubt it.
>	Dave Y.
> 


Francesco Sanfilippo,
Five Senses Productions
webmaster@5senses.com


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