As the hardtracking staff noted yesterday, corporate gunsel Rick Berman’s stealth non-profit, Center for Union Facts, has been running this ad lately in the Weekly Standard.

That raised a couple of questions for us, one of which was this:

Did Berman actually acquire the rights to that photograph? ‘Cause it sure doesn’t look like it from the ad.

So we sent a note to the Center for Union Whatever and here’s what came back from James Bowers at UnionFacts.com:

Dear [Hardtracking Staff],

Thanks for the email about the ad. While the Robinson photo may be in the Getty library, the original copyright expired in 1997. We accessed the file from the Library of Congress.

Thanks for your concern,

James

Fair enough. But that still doesn’t answer our other question:

Would Jackie Robinson really want himself associated with some union-busting creep like Rick Berman?

We think not, public domain or otherwise.

 

John R. Carroll is media analyst for NPR's Here & Now and senior news analyst for WBUR in Boston. He also writes at Campaign Outsider and It's Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town.
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