http://joshwolf.net/blog/
SAN FRANCISCO -- Whether he is a journalist or not, as many debate,
Josh Wolf believed strongly enough in the journalistic principle of
protecting his sources that he was willing to spend seven and a
half months in a federal prison being faithful to it.
Tuesday afternoon, he walked out of the Dublin Federal Correctional
Institution in California a free man.
Wolf was in prison for refusing to hand over video he shot during a
protest in San Francisco in 2005. In a deal brokered between his
lawyers and federal prosecutors, Wolf posted the uncut video of the
protest on his site, JoshWolf.net, gave prosecutors a copy, told
them he had not witnessed any crimes and was released.
Video
In interviews preceding his release, Wolf's family and peers
discuss his situation. » View
In exchange, prosecutors acceded to Wolf's key contention: that he
not be made to appear before a grand jury and identify those on his
videotape.
"Journalists absolutely have to remain independent of law
enforcement,'' Wolf told reporters outside the gates of the prison.
"Otherwise, people will never trust journalists.''
Just as Wolf became a poster boy for the debate over whether
bloggers are actually journalists and deserving of the same legal
protections, his status as an Internet icon may get another boost
as likely the first federal prison inmate to be released for
posting a video to his website.
Wolf, who calls himself an activist and anarchist on another one of
his sites, "The Revolution Will Be Televised," filmed a July 2005
San Francisco protest against the
World Trade Organization that turned violent. A police officer
suffered a fractured skull and there were allegations of attempted
arson.
Wolf provided some of the footage to local television stations, but
refused to give the raw outtakes to a grand jury or to
testify.
(Most states, including California, have shield laws providing
legal protections to journalists who want to preserve the
confidentiality of unnamed sources or unpublished material gathered
during the reporting process. However, those protections do not
apply to proceedings in federal court. There is no federal shield
law.
For more information regarding a federal shield law, visit the
Society of Professional Journalists' site; for more on Wolf's case,
see Yahoo! News' Media Issues coverage.)
The standoff led to Wolf being jailed and sparked a heated debate
about whether an activist blogger deserved the same protections as
a professional journalist.
I spoke to Wolf by telephone while he was still in prison a few
weeks ago and asked him if his advocacy made him selective in what
he videotaped at the protest. Would he turn off the camera to
protect his friends? A partial transcript of our conversation
follows (Listen to the full interview).
Kevin Sites: If there had been a situation where you saw a
protestor beating up a police officer, or you saw them committing
arson, would you have shot that?
Josh Wolf: I wasn't there to shoot that.
Kevin Sites: No, but would you have shot that?
Josh Wolf: That's a question I would have made in that
moment...
Kevin Sites: Well, that's what I want to ask you. If I asked you to
take sides, if I asked you to take a side of journalism or
activism, you know, which side are you taking here? Because you're
asking for the protection of journalism yet you're also seeking to
be an activist.
"My role is to uncover the truth to deliver to the public. That is
my number one accountability." Josh Wolf
Josh Wolf: Would you not say that Thomas Paine was an activist for
the Declaration of - or the independence of America and
also...
Kevin Sites: But I would say that he would not be claiming to be
journalist, he would be claiming to be an activist. That's all I'm
asking you to do, is take sides. Are you claiming to be an activist
or a journalist?
Josh Wolf: I don't. I see that advocacy has a firm role within the
realm of journalism.
Kevin Sites: Right, but as an advocate, you have to be willing to
allow yourself to be jailed and expect the consequences of your
actions. As a journalist, you're asking for certain protections,
you know, from those consequences. That's why I'm asking you, you
know, which side do you want to step on at this point.
Josh Wolf: My role is to uncover the truth to deliver to the
public. That is my number one accountability.
Kevin Sites: But that truth is through, as you said, a prism of
your own political convictions.
Josh Wolf: The truth is biased by everyone's convictions, whether
it's a corporate conviction of your employer, your own personal
convictions that are left politically based from mainstream press
perspective, or a more biased perspective [because of] which you
won't be as open about as a journalist who does not put forward an
impression that they are trying to be objective. If you watch the
videotape, you'll see there are many things that make the
protestors look bad and there are things that make the cops look
bad. It is essentially a balanced report of what I saw. It's a
bird's eye view.
Debra Saunders, a conservative columnist for the San Francisco
Chronicle, applauds Wolf's dedication, but doesn't believe he
should be called a journalist.
"I think that you can be a blogger and be a journalist," Saunders
tells me from her office at the Chronicle. "There are people who
fit that [description], but when you're an activist cavorting with
the people you're chronicling, then you are not a
journalist."
Her own newspaper disagrees with that assessment and has supported
Wolf on the Chronicle's opinion pages.
"The fact that Josh Wolf has strong political views does not
disqualify him from being a journalist any more than the fact that
I am an editorial page editor and have opinions disqualifies me
from being a journalist," says John Diaz of the Chronicle. "The
fact is, he was out at that rally, collecting information to
disseminate to the public. I think that makes him a
journalist."
Ultimately, Saunders says, it won't be journalists and bloggers who
decide the issue, but the government.
"The courts are going to end up deciding who journalists are,
because, unfortunately, this administration is really pushing the
envelope in jailing journalists, and it won't end with the Bush
administration," Saunders says. "It will get bigger as people point
fingers in many ways, and that means the courts are going to decide
who journalists are. You may not like it, but that's the way it
is."