A photojournalist friend of mine just sent me a link to the blog of Josh Wolf, who was arrested last month in the San Francisco Bay Area on a first amendment issue. From an Aug. 7 comment posted on Wolf’s blog:
In case you haven’t heard about it yet, Josh Wolf, a blogger who covered the recent G8 Summit in Scotland where some violence erupted has been jailed for not turning over to the authorities the video he shot of the event.
Wolf was jailed in early August. In early September he was released on bail. For the past month-plus Wolf’s mother and friends, and Wolf himself, under the code name "Insurgent," have been posting updates on Wolf’s blog. On Sept. 20 Wolf was granted a 2-day reprieve, which allowed him to attend a benefit for him held in San Francisco (where Wolf has been based for a while):
In Wolf’s reply brief to the court, he and his lawyers argue:
"… a fair reading of Supreme Court precedent requires a finding that there is a “substantial connection” between the information sought and the criminal conduct under investigation before a witness may be held in contempt for refusing to answer question that implicate First Amendment rights.
"The district court here declined to engage in the required balancing, specifically refusing to view the videotape to determine whether it bears a substantial or merely a ‘remote and tenuous relationship to the subject of the investigation’ and whether its production was required to satisfy a ‘legitimate need of law enforcement.’"
Having lived for a little more than a decade in the SF Bay Area, I know that there is a vigorous freedom of the press/independent media/intellectual property protection movement there, led by Media Alliance. Media Alliance’s executive director, Jeff Perlstein, was scheduled to speak at the Wolf benefit.
The Bay Area chapter of the National Writer’s Union and Truthout.org, an SF Bay area-based organisation "dedicated to establishing a powerful, stable voice for independent journalism," are also fighting on Wolf’s behalf.
What does this fight for a relatively obscure blogger’s rights as a "legitimate journalist" signify?
It seems to be a maybe small but possibly crucial battle in the war for establishment of full journalistic rights — and responsibilities — for bloggers who view themselves as journalists and act accordingly.
(Writer’s note: sorry about the misaligned paragraphs. Cutting and pasting wreaks havoc with my typesetting.)
