[Update : Opinion piece by Ann Woolner, ‘Reporter Today Is Prosecution Witness Tomorrow’, Bloomberg.com, February 2, 2007:
- … “The rules are changing,” says Kirtley, who until 1999 ran the Reporters’ Committee for Freedom of the Press in Arlington, Virginia.
It’s a trend likely to escalate given the prominence of the Libby trial and the impotence of the nation’s top First Amendment lawyers to find legal shelter for reporters and their sources.
It is sure to embolden law enforcers around the country. If Fitzgerald can force The New York Times to reveal sources, predicts Kirtley, “They’ll say, ‘Why can’t we do this with the Podunk Daily Journal?'”
Uncomfortable Choice
Increasingly, whether the question is steroid use in baseball or an anarchist protest in San Francisco, journalists are being forced to choose between helping law enforcement or going to jail …]
- Above : Glenn Milne drunkenly attempts to bring Josh Wolf’s predicament to the attention of fellow scribblers at last year’s Walkley Awards. Tragically, Milne’s courageous (if slightly wobbly) stand was widely misinterpreted by the assembled hacks as being motivated by a certain animus towards Stephen Mayne: “Milne pushed Mayne in the chest and repeatedly referred to Josh’s jailing as “a disgrace”. Mayne jumped off stage as Milne, slurring his words, continued to abuse the US legal system“
JUDGE DENIES JOSH WOLF’S RENEWED BID FOR RELEASE
SAN FRANCISCO (BCN)
January 30, 2007
A freelance journalist who has been in prison for more than five months for refusing to give a videotape to a grand jury lost a renewed bid for release today.
Josh Wolf, 24, will have been jailed for civil contempt of court longer than any other journalist in U.S. history as of February 6.
In a motion filed in San Francisco last week, he asked U.S. District Judge William Alsup to release him from the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin on the ground that he will never comply with the grand jury’s request, no matter how long he is confined.
Alsup turned down the request in a one-paragraph ruling today, saying that suggestions of compromise by one of Wolf’s lawyers reveal “a realistic possibility that Mr. Wolf’s confinement may be having its coercive effect.”
Alsup said he agreed with U.S. prosecutors’ argument that continued imprisonment may force Wolf to comply with the federal grand jury’s subpoena.
Pondra Perkins, one of Wolf’s lawyers, said the attorneys need to confer with their client and have not decided on their next steps in the case.
Perkins said the suggestions referred to by the judge, which were made by attorney Martin Garbus, were merely “exploratory questions to present options to the client” and were taken out of context.
The federal grand jury is seeking unaired sections of a videotape Wolf made of an anarchist demonstration in San Francisco on July 8, 2005, in which a police officer was injured. The panel is investigating a possible attempted arson of a police car that was partly paid for with federal funds [and hence comes under US federal anti-terror laws, while at the same time circumventing California state laws providing minimal legal protection for journalists — neat eh?].
Wolf contends that handing over the tape would make him into a spy for the government and impede his ability to work as a journalist.
He told the judge in a statement filed with his request on January 22 that complying with the subpoena “would obliterate my credibility as a reporter.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Finigan said in a brief filed Monday that Garbus’s suggestions included a proposal that Wolf could hand over the tape but not identify individual demonstrators.
Finigan argued that those suggestions and the possibility of an additional year in prison were both reasons for concluding that continued imprisonment might lead Wolf to comply with the subpoena.
The federal attorney wrote that Wolf could be kept in prison until the grand jury’s term expires in July and possibly for an additional six months if the term is extended.
Wolf was found in contempt of court and ordered to prison by Alsup on August 1. He was jailed at the Dublin facility from August 1 to September 1, was freed for three weeks during an unsuccessful appeal and then was imprisoned again from September 22 until the present.
The 2005 demonstration was a protest of an economic summit [G8] in [Gleneagles] Scotland. Wolf sold some parts of the videotape to local television stations and posted some sections on his Web site.
See also : Court denies video blogger’s motion for release, The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, January 31, 2007 and Attorneys for jailed blogger file motion for his release, January 25, 2007 | Australian Journalists’ Association expresses solidarity with jailed videoblogger
