A flag on the NFL's play

THE NATIONAL Football League is flexing its prodigious muscles in cyberspace, with a strict new media policy that forbids news organizations from offering on their websites more than 45 seconds per day of audio or video from NFL facilities. Particularly galling to news organizations is that the 45-second restriction applies to footage of press conferences, which would not even occur were there no reporters present to ask questions.

The league is clearly betting that it will lose less by trying to restrict news organizations' activities than it will gain from exercising strict control over what it sees as its own intellectual property. But as the NFL seeks to control its image, it has also exposed its own conflict between its business aims and its role as guardian of a national obsession.

Over the years, the relationship between professional sports and the news media has been mutually beneficial. Readers and viewers have a ravenous appetite for scores and other news about sports, and owners recognize that media coverage contributes to public enthusiasm about their teams.

Now the league wants to preserve revenue opportunities, including those on its NFL television network, its website, NFL.com, and the sites of its member teams. As a spokesman made clear in a recent Boston Globe story, the league sees itself as, among other things, "a media company."

We at this newspaper cannot, of course, claim to be unbiased observers of this issue, and the Associated Press Sports Editors organization, of which The Boston Globe is a member, is still in negotiations with the NFL over the new rules.

Professional football wouldn't be a multibillion-dollar enterprise if the league didn't assiduously promote its own interests. But the sport could suffer if the league seeks to become the main source of information about itself. Will the official website cover the league's own doings in a straightforward way, or will it be the NFL equivalent of the Soviet-era news agency TASS?

It's not at all clear that league officials see any difference between news coverage and marketing efforts that benefit the league's bottom line. Beyond imposing a new policy on Internet video, the league has also demanded that news photographers wear vests bearing the logos of official sponsors Canon and Reebok.

The next time an NFL franchise hits up a host city for millions of taxpayer dollars to build a new stadium, league officials are unlikely to be so explicit about their private sector interests.

The league ought to loosen up on the video restrictions. And it should recognize that it owes much of its success to the fact that Americans view its games as significant news events, rather than as just another product cranked out by just another business.