Sports Association

Statement by sports association spokes-­person:

Our sports association issues contracts to television networks for the exclusive right to broadcast our sporting events. For this right, the networks pay the association substantial fees, which help finance our leagues. We also provide free media passes to our events for journalists so that they can effectively report on sports news, including final scores. Now, how­ever, some news organizations are posting video clips, audio clips, digital photographs, and live score updates from our events on their websites. Conditions must be placed on these practices, which go beyond mere sports news reporting; they harm the value of our broad­casting contracts and violate our rights as the owners of the sports leagues. News organiza­tions that wish to post such information on their websites should therefore sign contracts with the sports association that stipulate what post­ings will be allowed and how much they will cost. As we have in the past, we will deny media passes to journalists from news organi­zations that do not comply with our require­ments.

News Organizations

Statement by news organizations spokes­person:

me news business has largely shifted (rom print media to the Internet, where readers expect text to be accompanied by audio and Images To charge news organizations for providing online sports coverage or to place unnecessary conditions on that coverage is to deny news organizations their right to cover the news. Online news sites are not asking to broadcast sporting events In their entirety, and their sports reporting does not detract from the value of the sports leagues or their events. On the contrary—free, engaging sports reporting generates interest in sports and thus benefits readers and the sports association alike. News organizations must be allowed to report freely about sports on their websites, in any time­frame, using any type of online medium they deem effective.

    For many years, historians thought that the development of capitalism had not faced serious challenges in the United States. Writing in the early twentieth century, Progressive historians sympathized with the battles waged by farmers and small producers against large capitalists in the late nineteenth century, but they did not question the widespread acceptance of laissez-faire (unregulated) capitalism throughout American history. Similarly, Louis Hartz, who sometimes disagreed with the Progressives, argued that Americans accepted laissez-faire capitalism without challenge because they lacked a feudal, precapitalist past. Recently, however, some scholars have argued that even though laissez-faire became the prevailing ethos in nineteen-century America, it was not accepted without struggle. Laissez-faire capitalism, they suggest, clashed with existing religious and communitarian norms that imposed moral constraints on acquisitiveness to protect the weak from the predatory, the strong from corruption, and the entire culture from materialist excess. Buttressed by mercantilist notions that government should be both regulator and promoter of economic activity, these norms persisted long after the American Revolution helped unleash the economic forces that produced capitalism. These scholars argue that even in the late nineteenth century, with the government's role in the economy considerably diminished, laissez-faire had not triumphed completely. Hard times continued to revive popular demands for regulating business and softening the harsh edges of aissez-faire capitalism.

    In the 1930's and 1940's, African American industrial workers in the southern United States, who constituted 80 percent of the unskilled factory labor force there, strongly supported unionization. While the American Federation of Labor (AFL) either excluded African Americans or maintained racially segregated unions, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) organized integrated unions nationwide on the basis of a stated policy of equal rights for all, and African American unionists provided the CIO's backbone. Yet it can be argued that through contracts negotiated and enforced by White union members, unions—CIO unions not excluded—were often instrumental in maintaining the occupational segregation and other forms of racial discrimination that kept African Americans socially and economically oppressed during this period. However, recognizing employers' power over workers as a central factor in African Americans' economic marginalization, African American workers saw the need to join with White workers in seeking change despite White unionists' toleration of or support for racial discrimination. The persistent efforts of African American unionists eventually paid off: many became highly effective organizers, gaining the respect of even racist White unionists by winning victories for White as well as African American workers. African American unionists thus succeeded in strengthening the unions while using them as instruments of African Americans' economic empowerment.