The McCain campaign finds itself having to defend itself in its use of the POW interview footage. The Telegraph has a story up today titled,
"John McCain campaign runs into trouble after using Vietnam PoW footage"
John McCain's presidential campaign has run into new problems after it used footage of him as a prisoner of war in Vietnam that has become the subject of a legal row.
Hot on the $150,000 heels of McCain having to defend his running mate's spending spree, is this new story up in the British press about how the McCain campaign failed to secure the rights to the McCain POW interview that the campaign has been featuring recently. The Telegraph has the story:
The Republicans have used shots and excerpts from the 1967 interview in their advertising but the widow of the journalist who made the film says it was released without her permission.
Mei Chen Chalais, whose husband, Francois, spoke to a bedridden McCain, is demanding payment from at least seven French and American broadcasters.
Her lawyers say they even sent a letter on the rights issue to Mr McCain's campaign team, although Mme Chalais does not want to sue the former PoW.
The French national audiovisual archive, INA, decided to post the four and a half minute interview on its website for a week, evidently much to the happiness of the hard-pressed McCain presidential campaign.
Some of the images from the black and white interview have been used in McCain advertising and on his campaign website.
Mme Chalais has complained that the four and a half minute interview, for which she owns the rights, will be taken out of context when seen on its own.
Behind in the polls, seeking to shore up the base in the former Bush states that are now slipping away, John McCain finds himself in the unenviable position of having to knock down another negative, damaging story.
Update: This story is also up in the UK Times, "Reporter's widow plans to sue over McCain interview", with some more specific information on the widow:
The widow of a French reporter says she is going to sue television stations around the world for using a widely-known interview showing John McCain as a prisoner of war in Vietnam in 1967.
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She is worried that the meaning of her husband’s video could be hijacked or misused. "I am not doing this for money, I just want to keep an eye on who is using these images and why," she told The Times. "And I don’t want my husband’s work to be pillaged. I have decided to sue all broadcasters who used the footage without authorisation. Unhappily, it’s harder to keep a watch on all the internet websites."
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"McCain has been a prisoner. He has not invented this story, he has used only few seconds from the footage, I won’t sue him for this but I sent him the extended footage" Mrs Chalais said.
But she plans to meet her lawyer tomorrow about another story, a movie describing the interview, called The Faith of Fathers. "My husband is shown as pro-North Vietnam and a very aggressive journalist who tries to extract confession from McCain. I don't like it so much because that is not the truth, François was a very honest journalist," she said.
From this additional information, it sounds like the McCain campaign has been warned about using the footage, but at this point Mrs. Chalais is focused more on preventing news networks from unauthorized use of the footage. I haven't heard of the "Faith of Fathers" film, but the title is similar to McCain's autobiography. Is this a McCain camp production?