Blogger Freed After 226 Days in Jail For Contempt 224
frdmfghtr writes "Over at CNN is a report that a blogger has been freed after spending 226 days in jail — a record for a journalist held in contempt. 'Wolf had been found in contempt for refusing to obey a subpoena to turn over his video from a July 2005 protest during the G-8 economic summit where anarchists were suspected of vandalizing a San Francisco police car. One city officer was struck during the rally and his skull was fractured ... California's shield law allows reporters to keep sources and unpublished material secret. But there is no federal shield law protecting reporters from federal investigations. The National Writer's Union, which represents freelance writers, said in a statement that Wolf should never have been jailed. "The abuses visited on Josh and other journalists are part of an effort by governments at all levels to control the volume, flow and content of the information that reaches the public," the union said.'"
Delicate Balance (Score:5, Insightful)
The most obvious standard for turning over material would be "criminal activity only," but that isn't liberal enough -- what happens when the alleged act shouldn't be a crime to begin with? (See, for example, the PATRIOT Act and DMCA, in many cases.)
Government control? (Score:0, Insightful)
A small matter of fructured skull (Score:1, Insightful)
2. The blogger directly recorded videos in question, so he is only protecting perpetrators of a crime, not innocent bystanders
I don't see how this is different from a regular individual who witnesses a crime and refuses to testify. If we allow this, anyone can claim to be an amateur journalist just because they don't want to testify about their buddies or bother coming to court. And we compare this to a political leak, it would like someone pointing out that one of the Senators is sleeping with underage boys but refusing to reveal which one.
Re:A small matter of fructured skull (Score:2, Insightful)
So far everyone has missed the point... (Score:5, Insightful)
For those of us still in the world with free thinking and actually use the rights afforded to us by the Constitution, this is a worrisome trend. Since 9/11, local, state and federal officers in both uniforms and plain clothes have been monitoring protesters. In particular, they want to know who the leaders and most vocal of the bunch are. This is then followed by the creation of dossiers outlining the activities of these people who exercise their right to dissent against mainsteam political opinions. With the advent of the PATRIOT act and various other "terrorism" related laws, wiretaps, probing of bank records, etc. are used not only to intimidate but silence anything that Big Brother doesn't agree with.
The point all of you have missed is that Wolf's footage never included vandalism of the police car--which was reported by the city of San Francisco to be nothing more than a broken tail light. The assault on the officer was captured only on a photograph by another protester and was also never part of Wolf's footage. The official reason for the subpoena the video was so the panel could see if any other potential crimes were committed. This however wasn't really the case because it was suspected Mr. Wolf knew the identities of people who choose to mask their faces during the protest. Mr. Wolf refused to turn these over because nothing else was needed from those tapes other than the profiling of activists at the protest and he didn't want to be compelled on the stand to give up those identities. Mr. Wolf and his lawyers believe there is no reason to comply with a Grand Jury not called in good faith to subvert his First Amendment rights--the reason it was called was because apparently Federal funds helped to pay for the police car. He stayed in jail for 286 but eventually gave in. This is very worrisome!
Where is the Slashdot group-think now? So have all of you decided that you're now aligned with dossiers and profiling of people who exercise their Constitutional rights? Are we saying that any footage caught in a public place, even if we don't prompt the said incident, is our responsibility? I hope I'm wrong.
Re:Real mature (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:What am i missing? (Score:5, Insightful)
If just anybody can claim to be a journalist and clam up, police and prosecution will have a lot less evidence to work with and have great problems prosecuting anyone. This is obviously a bad thing too.
The trick is to strike a balance between these public interests. That's a nuanced discussed not ideally suited to slashdot.
One thing you can say is: if this guy withstood 226 days of imprisonment and still didn't turn over the tapes, it seems pretty obvious that the court is taking extreme liberties with this guys personal freedoms, without producing results.
All the more irksome is that the guy went to jail without a real trial. For all we know the tapes, not having been physically entered into evidence, never actually existed, and the whole thing is based on hearsay and a confession.
Of course, the prevailing public mood in any case seems to be "something bad happened, so someone should go to jail". We live in interesting times.
Re:A small matter of fructured skull (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, yeah. If there's no other evidence against you, then you're home free.
--Jeremy
Journalist. (Score:5, Insightful)
Who decides?
There are 3 options:
A) A journalist is someone 'licenced' as such by a government body. I'm sure everyone can see the danger in that...
B) A journalist is someone 'licenced' as such by a media coporation, such as Fox News, CNN,
C) A journalist is someone who *journals* - who records events for posterity and/or to inform the people.
I personally feel that C is the most sensible, and by far the safest for society. In any rate, FTA: "Wolf, a freelancer, sold some footage to San Francisco television stations and posted it on his Web site, but refused to turn over unpublished material." So both B and C would classify him as a Journalist.
-Chris
Re:Journalist? (Score:3, Insightful)
Hrm... The BBC called him a reporter [bbc.co.uk] so mayhaps that makes it so?
Personally, I believe anyone can call themselves a journalist. There is no international standard and freedom of the press includes any Joe Scmhoe with a blog or a xerox copier.
When the constitution was written, newspapers were basically one page opinion journals written by anyone who happened to own a printing press. You didn't have to go to school, get a license from the government, or have other "journalists" recognize you. Same thing should apply today.
However, I think the key difference was that Freedom of the Press meant the government could not suppress your literature. He wasn't as much as being prevented from publishing as much as he was resisting court subpoena from giving information on it.
Although, what he was doing may not have been covered by Freedom of the Press he stuck by his guns and stuck through it. He could have at any moment gave names and addresses and been a free man, but he choose to actually go through with jail time.
I will give him that... Most of us are hard pressed to bother to vote on election day.
We are lazy and cowards and we have gotten the government we deserved. If there were a hundred thousand more guys like this we'd most likely have a government that stands up for something worth fighting for.
Re:Blogger jailed? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What am i missing? (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, and he never got a trial by jury either - despite spending 8 months in prison.
Contempt of court should be a criminal charge like any other, and should require a court trial and sentence like any other crime. It shouldn't result in a person being held in prison indefinitely without a trial.