Fliers skew Pilot’s views

An attorney representing the Daily Pilot on Thursday characterized a local political group’s unauthorized use of the newspaper’s logo and a quote taken from online reader’s comments in campaign literature as “unfair,” while a representative from the group said using excerpts from news articles and editorials is a common political campaign practice.

“With circulation for local papers in Orange County down the way it has been, I don’t see anything wrong with a little free advertisement,” said Scott Hart, a political consultant for the group Newporters Vote No on B.

Newporters Vote No on B mailed a full-color flier printed on glossy paper to Newport Beach residents earlier this week featuring the Daily Pilot’s logo and a quote supporting the group’s cause taken from a reader’s comment on the newspaper’s website. The newspaper prints a selected reader’s response to local issues every day in a “Web Threads” box on its front page.

Attorney Karlene Goller, vice president of legal and deputy general counsel for the Los Angeles Times, said the reader’s quote used in the political mailer was taken out of context and misrepresented the Daily Pilot’s editorial stance. The Daily Pilot is a Tribune Co.-owned newspaper inserted daily in the Los Angeles Times in certain areas.

“They have misrepresented the Daily Pilot’s position on the matter — that’s not fair, and that’s false,” Goller said. “I would hope they would be honest enough to own up to it and fix it.”

Newporters Vote No on B opposes Measure B, a Feb. 5 ballot measure that would determine where the next Newport Beach City Hall can be built. The Daily Pilot has endorsed the measure in its editorial pages.

Hart said the group City Hall in the Park, which is in favor of the measure, has also mailed out campaign literature featuring multiple uses of the newspaper’s logo and a Daily Pilot editorial endorsing Measure B. Efforts to reach officials from the City Hall in the Park campaign were unsuccessful Thursday.

“I don’t think it was taken out of context at all,” Hart said. “I think we appropriately credited it to where it came from.”

Attorney Nathan Siegel, an expert on media law for the Los Angeles-based firm Levine Sullivan Koch & Schultz, said whether either group can legally use content from the pages of the Daily Pilot depends on how much they use and how often they use it. To some extent, political campaigns can claim “fair use,” a legal principle that allows some uses of copyrighted material without permission, he said.

“Generally, campaigns have to abide by both copyright and trademark laws,” Siegel said. “You can make fair use to some extent, but it really depends on how far you go how and much of the material you use — it certainly isn’t uncommon for campaigns to circulate an endorsement editorial.”

Political causes have a much weaker claim to legally use copyright- or trademark-protected material from a newspaper if it is taken out of context or misrepresented in some way, Siegel said.

“The basic notion of fair use is that it has to be fair,” he said.

BRIANNA BAILEY may be reached at (714) 966-4625 or at [email protected].