Editors Guild says revised guidelines are harsh

The Editors Guild of India has said the revised guidelines issued by the Indian Premier League on Tuesday are still harsh and will affect the freedom of newspapers.

In a press release circulated to all its members and other media bodies, including the Indian Newspaper Society, and the Sport Journalists' Federation of India, Guild secretary KS Sachidananda Murthy said the final terms of media accreditation for the IPL's first season were unacceptable. He said the conditions would seriously influence the independence of editors, especially when it comes to the selection and use of photographs.

Although the IPL formally withdrew some of the original contentious clauses, it maintained its hardline stand on websites - their representatives will not be allowed into the venue during matches and they will not have access to photographs.

Murthy said the IPL's demand that newspapers and news agencies must provide free of charge the photographs requested by the IPL for use and reproduction was unacceptable. While the Guild noted that there was some relaxation in the originally proposed terms and conditions, the blanket prohibition on the use of photographs taken by a newspaper or news agency, which are their exclusive property, for online use or syndication is unacceptable.

The Guild felt the IPL should not be putting a quantitative limit on the number of photographs a newspaper or news agencies can uphold to its website, as it was clearly the domain of the editor to decide. In its new guidelines, the IPL allowed newspapers with their own web publication to upload six different pictures on their online photo galleries in addition to the pictures published in print.

The original guidelines, published last week, had provoked widespread outrage, with the Editors Guild criticising the "prohibitive conditions", which it said were "unprecedented and unacceptable to the Indian media."