RTDNF has produced public service announcements for your station to air the week of March 14-20, 2010, and throughout the year. The PSAs are :15 or :30 in English and Spanish.
Audio versions are available in English and Spanish at :30 and can be downloaded below. Scripts for the PSA's are available below as well.
RTDNF’s Sunshine Week PSAs were produced in 2009 with the generous support of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
The 30-second English and Spanish PSAs can be previewed in the YouTube players below. To download the videos for use, please see the links below the YouTube players.
The scripts to the 30 second and 15 second PSAs in English and Spanish are available here:
RTDNA Sunshine Week 2010
“Heroes” - English & Spanish :30 TV PSA
(ALL V.O.)
ENGLISH
WE CAN BE HEROES.
WE DON’T LEAP TALL BUILDINGS OR CLIMB WALLS. BUT WE HAVE, EACH OF US, A POWER.
THE POWER TO PAY ATTENTION AND GET INVOLVED.
THE POWER, THROUGH OUR SUNSHINE LAWS, TO FORCE OUR LEADERS TO KEEP THEIR MEETINGS AND RECORDS OPEN TO THE PUBLIC... AND MAKE OUR GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABLE.
BRIGHTEN THE WORLD WITH YOUR VIGILANCE, AND OUR SUNSHINE LAWS WILL LIFT A NATION.
LEARN MORE AT SUNSHINE-WEEK-DOT-ORG. A MESSAGE FROM THESE SPONSORS.
SPANISH
Podemos ser héroes.
No saltamos edificios altos ni escalamos paredes. Pero, cada uno de nosotros, tiene un poder.
El poder de prestar atención y estar involucrados.
El poder, a través de las Leyes de Transparencia, para exigir a nuestros representantes que conserven sus reuniones y archivos abiertos al público...
Y hagan a nuestro gobierno responsable.
Ilumine el mundo con su vigilancia, y nuestras Leyes de Transparencia engrandecerán a nuestra Nación.
Aprenda más en sunshine-week-dot-org.
Un mensaje de nuestros patrocinadores.
RTDNA - Sunshine Week 2010
“Heroes” - English & Spanish :15 TV PSA
(ALL VO)
ENGLISH
EACH OF US CAN BE A HERO.
WITH THE POWER, THROUGH OUR SUNSHINE LAWS, TO FORCE OUR LEADERS TO MAKE OUR GOVERNMENT MORE OPEN AND ACCOUNTABLE.
BRIGHTEN THE WORLD WITH YOUR VIGILANCE.
LEARN MORE AT SUNSHINE-WEEK-DOT-ORG. A MESSAGE FROM THESE SPONSORS.
SPANISH
Cada uno de nosotros puede ser un héroe.
Con el poder de las leyes de transparencia, para exigir a nuestros representantes que nuestro gobierno sea más abierto y responsable.
Ilumine al mundo con su vigilancia.
Aprenda más en sunshine-week-dot-org.
Un mensaje de nuestros patrocinadores.
Contact Stacey Staniak at 202-467-5214 for more information about RTNDF's Sunshine Week Campaign.
RTDNA, as part of the Shield Law Coalition, believes It is critical that senators on the Judiciary Committee hear from their constituents before markup of S 448 occurs on Thursday, November 19. RTDNA members are asked to contact committee members and urge them to support the compromise bill, but to allow an up-or-down vote on the bill on November 19 to enable the legislative process to move forward – even if some senators might vote against the legislation.
It is also important to communicate that national security concerns, expressed by Senators in both parties, have been addressed – significant concessions were made in the compromise bill to take into account national security.
Mr. Mike Slive
Commissioner
Southeastern Conference
2201 Richard Arrington Boulevard North
Birmingham, AL 35203
Dear Mr. Slive:
Like many news organizations, the Radio-Television News Directors Association (RTNDA) found the terms and conditions for use of media credentials issued by the SEC earlier this month objectionable. We have now had opportunity to review the revised package circulated last week. While we appreciate certain of the changes made to the terms first issued, the media restrictions applicable to the rapidly approaching college football season still remain onerous, and threaten to severely limit the ability of journalists to provide the coverage that is, in fact, valuable to the SEC and important to its fans in local communities.
As a preliminary matter, RTNDA’s members respect the intellectual property rights of the SEC, its member institutions, and their athletic associations. It is not our intent to seek to infringe upon such rights. That said, the revised media restrictions do not represent a reasonable attempt to balance the interests of the SEC with the editorial and business concerns voiced by the media. As a practical matter, they will prevent journalists from reasonably covering the SEC and its member football teams. RTNDA is particularly troubled by:
Prohibitions against making any game film or video of and Event available to any other organization other than the Bearer’s, regardless of whether the planned use may be news or editorial in nature. This term essentially proscribes news sharing, a common arrangement among television stations covering SEC member institutions. For the SEC and its member institutions, this will translate to far less local coverage and fan satisfaction.
Barring broadcasters from using any video of the event anywhere but during their regularly scheduled newscasts. This term unnecessarily restricts stations from promoting their SEC news/sports coverage, and appears to rule out the use of video footage that news organizations themselves take in pre- or post-game specials, season recaps, or other station programming.
Limiting online use of our video to a single, non-archived simulcast. In addition to severely restricting online news coverage of SEC events, which is often more in-depth than what is available to the public on-air, this term would prohibit stand-alone online newscasts, and bar television stations from offering viewers the ability to watch news broadcasts online at their convenience, a common practice. As a practical matter, stations would be forced to include a black screen in any newscast archived and available online that includes a segment with video of an SEC event.
Giving our video a brief seven (7) day shelf life. The inability to archive video is editorially crippling. We may track a player’s career from high school, through college, and on to the NFL, for example. Cutting off access to our video archive after seven (7) days would compromise journalists’ ability to do retrospective or historic reporting, as well as expanded reporting concerning conference championship games, bowl games (or the equivalent for other SEC sports), all of which promote the SEC and its member institutions.
Limiting video clips to 3 minutes or less. Again, this limits our editorial discretion, particularly regarding pre/post-game programming and championship specials.
Embargoing video until the Event has been completed. This prohibition extends far beyond preventing competing real-time coverage of an event to preventing promotion of upcoming news/sports coverage and potential breaking news events.
Prohibiting real time descriptions such as blogging. Media blogging does not compete as a substitute for television or video play-by-play, but typically involves online commentary and analysis that serves as an enhancement to news coverage and is welcomed by fans who may also be watching the licensed broadcast.
Proscribing radio journalists from broadcasting any report from the venue on a live basis. Again, there may be occasion to report from the venue live because of a newsworthy event. Such an instance would not compete with play-by-play coverage.
Creating a license for credential holders to take and use photos and video in news coverage, and preventing broadcasters from relicensing images or video from its broadcast feeds. This provision attempts to rewrite existing law which vests copyright in the party that fixes the image or video.
Barring use of audio and/or video on the credential holder’s website without execution of a separate agreement with the SEC. RTNDA understands this provision to mean that the SEC will provide audio/video at no charge under the terms of a separate agreement that will enable journalists to incorporate certain audio/video on their websites using the SEC’s online viewer. Limiting online audio/video to SEC-sanctioned clips, however, will constrain the electronic media from disseminating objective and newsworthy information about SEC events to the public. Moreover, to our knowledge, the SEC has not released a copy of the separate agreement.
RTNDA believes that the terms of the 2009 credentials stand at odds with the principles of a free press and represent an intrusion into the editorial activities of the media organizations who regularly cover the SEC. Particularly through their application to online distribution platforms of the traditional media, which offer additional means for news organizations to provide quality, objective, and in-depth coverage to fans both inside and outside of local communities, the SEC’s credentials undermine the ability of electronic journalists to report on SEC sporting events, at the expense of the public.
RTNDA hopes you will further reconsider these unwise restrictions.
The Honorable Karen Bass
Speaker of the California Assembly
State Capitol
10th & L Street
Sacramento, CA� 95814
Dear Speaker Bass:
On behalf of the Radio-Television News Directors Association (“RTNDA”), I am writing to express our serious concern with AB 524, the “invasion of privacy” bill now pending before the Senate.� As presently drafted, the bill is alarming in its complete disregard for well-established First Amendment protections and its threat to the role the press plays as surrogate eyewitness for the public.
In attempting to curb the excesses of the so-called “paparazzi,” this proposed legislation would, among other things, unduly chill important speech and contravene the established right of news organizations to publish or broadcast images that are newsworthy or otherwise of public concern.� California’s existing Anti-Paparazzi law creates a statutory cause of action for “invasion of privacy,” but that statutory action only applies to the person who actually captures the image or recording.� Indeed, the existing law was crafted so as to expressly state that the subsequent sale, transmission, publication, broadcast or use of an image or recording obtained in violation of the statute is not in and of itself unlawful, and thus recognizes at least certain of the core First Amendment values it impacts.
AB 524, however, would amend this existing law so that a person or entity who sells, transmits, publishes or broadcasts an image, recording, or physical impression of someone engaged in a personal or familial activity would violate the invasion of privacy statute if the person or entity publishing, even though not the one actually capturing the image, recording or impression, has actual knowledge that the image, recording or impression was unlawfully obtained.� While RTNDA is troubled by other aspects of the proposed legislation, it is this extension of extreme liability to the publisher—without any exception or even regard for whether the information obtained is truthful or concerns a matter or public importance—that compels us to write urging its immediate revision.
The Bill Analysis undertaken by the Assembly Committee on Judiciary concludes that laws that prohibit the disclosure of unlawfully obtained information, where the one disclosing knows or has reason to know that it was unlawfully obtained, are not necessarily facially unconstitutional, but may be found unconstitutional as applied, especially where the information is a matter of public concern.� The analysis looks at three germane cases, including the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Bartnicki v. Vopper, 532 U.S. 514 (2001).� At its core, Bartnicki provides strong support for the constitutional right of the press to publish truthful information about matters of public interest, even when that information is unlawfully obtained.� The Court made clear that journalists and others cannot be punished for publishing information obtained illegally so long as the issue concerns an issue of public importance and the press did not participate in or encourage the illegal activity.� In fact, the Court’s majority rejected, out of hand, the government’s argument that punishing the disclosure of information was necessary to remove the incentive of others to engage in illegal behavior, which is precisely the sort of disincentive (cutting off at the source the financial incentives that presumably drive the behavior of so-called paparazzi) AB 524 appears designed to achieve.� Enforcement against the wrongdoers themselves is one thing; if the current sanctions do not serve as an adequate deterrent, perhaps the remedy lies therein.� But as the Bartnicki Court observed, it would be “quite remarkable to hold that speech by a law-abiding possessor of information can be suppressed in order to deter conduct by a non-law-abiding third party.”
Moreover, in balancing the interest in protecting the sanctity of privacy against the First Amendment right to publish, the Court found that the right to publish the publicly important conversations prevailed.� RTNDA respectfully submits, therefore, that without an exception for matters of public concern, AB 524 is constitutionally unsound on its face.
As a practical matter, RTNDA cannot overstate the chilling impact AB 524 would have on the dissemination of newsworthy material.� While the requirement that the defendant have “actual knowledge” that an image was unlawfully obtained might, on its face, appear to limit the liability of news organizations who pay for video or still images taken by freelancers, stringers or others, as a practical matter that is simply not the case.� In this day and age, the costs of litigation are excruciatingly expensive, and it is no secret that news organizations, whether print, broadcast, or online news sources, have undergone or are facing drastic budget cuts and financial challenges.� Under AB 524, an entity that publishes an image alleged to be obtained unlawfully under the anti-paparazzi measure would face with the significant burden at trial of proving that it did not, in fact, have actual knowledge that the image was unlawfully obtained.� The cost of the litigation itself—regardless of whether the entity would ultimately be vindicated—would force lawyers instructed to minimize costs associated with litigation risks to advise against publication.� Moreover, the legislation would allow certain individuals to manipulate the news.� For example, where a public figure’s attorney, having knowledge that a photograph or recording about to be published will reveal some wrongdoing by a client dashes off a letter to news organizations claiming that the image or recording was obtained illegally, would that result in “actual knowledge?”� Certainly it is a question whose answer might be uncertain enough to prompt newsroom lawyers to censor.� At a minimum, where the material involves a matter of public concern, as a matter of public policy the risk of violating AB 524 should not be part of the decision making process about whether or not to publish.�
Attempting to guard the privacy of celebrities, particularly where existing laws offer adequate protection, is no reason to suppress freedom of the press and to violate the right of the public to see and hear news imagery without government intervention.� There is no reason existing law cannot deal adequately with the problems this legislation purports to address.� Dozens of laws exist to prosecute those whose actions violate laws banning trespassing, assault, invasion of privacy and reckless endangerment without special favor to celebrities or special sanction against the press.� Our members are cognizant of the problems created by some in pursuit of photographs or video.� RTNDA does not condone harassing behavior.� In fact, our Code of Ethics provides that RTNDA members will “respect the dignity, privacy and well-being of people with whom they deal.”� But as Thomas Jefferson so often expressed, a free unfettered press is a necessary “evil” to the preservation of an open, democratic society.� AB 524 threatens to drastically curtail the ability of the free press to serve as public watchdog.� The Senate should refrain from embarking on this slippery slope, at the cost of California taxpayers, in pursuit of a special interest that can by no means be described as societal, and in contravention of the First Amendment.
Memo to Press Secretaries of Congress and the Executive Branch
Re: Keeping public Speeches “on the record”
In the spirit of greater transparency for government activities, a goal that we in the media applaud, we would like to encourage you to address a common source of friction between reporters and the public officials they cover – off-the-record comments at public meetings.
This practice primarily involves Congressional and federal agency staff members, who frequently offer insight into policy deliberations at widely attended events such as conferences, but either refuse to allow reporters to use the information or insist that they not be named in news stories.
As reporters, we frequently allow administration officials and congressional staff aides to speak on "background" or "off the record" in our private conversations, but those agreements are made selectively in one-one-one situations in an effort to encourage officials to be more forthcoming. Presentations at public meetings by their nature do not involve classified information or other information that must be withheld from the public.
Unfortunately, the practice of granting "background" or "off-the-record" status to officials' comments has gradually expanded over the years to a point where many public officials see no problem with telling large audiences that their speeches are also off the record. After cancelling a speech in January 2009 at a Midwestern university when a student newspaper objected to her off-the-record terms, a government official said such a practice is common practice in Washington and she has "spoken widely off-the-record and it has been respected."
Another example – commonplace for many Washington reporters – occurred recently when two high-level Hill staffers told an audience of 300 people that they would be speaking off the record.
On a few occasions, Obama administration officials also have gone the off-the-record route at public meetings.
Unfortunately, many congressional offices, committees, and federal agencies follow this policy, prohibiting their staff members or officials from speaking on the record, even when their remarks are delivered to a large audience to which the press has been invited.
This practice disadvantages the press and the public in favor of special audiences who are not bound by the attribution rules. Sometimes these events are webcast, and many non-press professionals use their own e-mail news updates, blogs, and even "tweets" to pass along tips they hear about policy direction. They may not feel the same obligation to honor an off-the-record request as professional journalists.
Despite this inequity, many reporters in such situations have honored the declarations that the remarks are off the record.
To address this longstanding problem, we ask that government officials, including congressional staff members and federal agency representatives, start treating their comments at widely attended events as on the record.
Keeping public remarks by officials at all levels in the government on the record will greatly improve transparency and accountability for taxpayers.
Sincerely,
American Society of News Editors
Association of Alternative Newsweeklies
Bureau of National Affairs, Inc.
Daily Press Gallery of Congress Standing Committee of Correspondents
New York Times
Newspaper Association of America
Periodical Press Gallery of Congress Executive Committee
RTNDA is protesting the treatment by
a Veterans Affairs public affairs employee of a reporter for WAMU-FM in
Washington,
DC. David Schultz was interviewing a veteran
at a public meeting when a Veterans Affairs employee interrupted and demanded
that Schultz surrender his recording equipment. After being surrounded by armed
guards, Schultz surrendered his memory card, which has still not been returned.
Read RTNDA President
Barbara
Cochran’s letter to the Department of Veterans
Affairs.
Democratic majorities in both chambers have improved the outlook for long-awaited media initiatives. Kathleen Kirby discusses Freedom of Information Issues pending in the 111th Congress.
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