from www.news-press.com – An interesting television imbroglio developed a week or so back involving the story of former Fort Myers Beach town manager Scott Janke and his porn-star wife, Anabela Mota.
Janke was fired July 21 when news leaked that his wife is a porn star who goes by the name Jazella Moore. The following Friday, the couple was in New York City where they were interviewed live on “The Early Show.” That’s the morning news program on CBS, seen locally on WINK-TV.
NBC2, the local NBC affiliate, videotaped the program and, later that day, used clips from the CBS interview in their newscasts.
WINK and CBS cried foul – arguing that was an exclusive interview on a copyrighted TV program.
NBC2 cited the “fair use” rule – a nebulous legal standing that allows certain, limited uses of someone else’s material.
I spoke to Frank Verdel, the news director at Fox4. His station used only a few seconds of video from the CBS interview. So far, no one has contacted Fox4 about this issue.
The CBS network legal department was supposed to writing a formal letter to NBC2 about this issue, but what exactly it is going to say is unknown. As of this past Friday, NBC2 hadn’t received any letter.
“My sense and CBS’s feeling is that this story did not meet fair use,” said Russ Kilgore, the news director at WINK-TV. “If this were to meet fair use, then I can just pull two minutes of the (NBC) ‘Today’ show every day and run it in my 5 o’clock news.”
The matter was further complicated because CBS and “The Early Show” had struck a deal with the syndicated program “Inside Edition” that prevented CBS from sharing the video with its own affiliates. WINK-TV had to get special permission to air the CBS interview.
NBC2 defends its decision.
“It is fair use. Our attorney agrees it was fair use,” said Darrel Adams, NBC2’s news director. “It was the first time a major news maker in our market was talking. It’s that cut and dried.”
Personally, I’m not sure who’s right in this situation. I can see aspects of both sides of the argument. Having worked in a television newsroom for 10 years, I can tell you that the issue of “fair use” came up very rarely.
That being said, I don’t have a dog in this fight so we’ll have to wait and see what happens betwixt the players. I’ll keep you posted.