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 California's shield law allows reporters to keep sources and unpublished material secret.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.)
Re:Delicate Balance (Score:5, Informative)
Contrary to popular opinion, this legal entanglement which has held me in Federal Prision for the past eight months, has never been about a videotape nor is the investigation about the alleged attempted arson of a San Francisco police vehicle as the government claims. While it is true that I was held in custody for refusing to surrender the tape and that the justification for making a federal case out of this was the police car, things are not always as they appear. The reality is that this investigation is far more pervasive and perverse than a superficial examination will reveal.
When I was subpoenaed in February of last year, I was not only ordered to provide my unedited footage, but to also submit to testimony and examination before the secretive grand jury. Although I feel that my unpublished material should be shielded from government demands, it was the testimony which I found to be the more egregious assault on my right and ethics as both a journalist and a citizen.
As there was nothing of a sensitive or confidential nature on my video outtakes, I had no reason to withhold their publication once I had exhausted all my legal appeals. When that point arrived I had already spent three months behind bars. I was advised by my legal team that publishing the video would not lead to my release; instead it would indicate to the court that my imprisonment was having a coercive effect even though it was not.
This hypothesis was verified when one of my attorney's inquired whether the Assistant US Attorney would accept the footage in lieu of my testimony, he was told that the video alone would not suffice and that the US Attorney would accept nothing less than my full compliance with the demands of the subpoena. Things change.
When the judge came to realize the support for my cause was growing and that I was unlikely to waver anytime soon, he ordered both parties to meet with a magistrate judge in the hopes we could reach a solution amenable to everyone. After two rather strenuous sessions of mediation, we at last came to an agreement that not only leaves my ethics intact but actively serves the role of a free press in our so-called free socieity.
In the words of Justice Douglas, "The press has a preferred position in our constitutional scheme, not to enable it to make money, not to set newsmen apart as a favored class, but to bring fulfillment to the public's right to know".
EVeryone knows the govt is evil!!!! (Score:2)
Because NY Times sucks, as it makes old articles 'pay for view'
Wow, since when is history for sale? Ahh its only for the rich to know the truth.
Any way... the US govt is evil, etc.. yadda yadda... scum bags , or shit bags.
If Jesus was here today, he would turn those attorneys into instant dust and LOL, be damned, worship the ORI!!!
What Crap (Score:2)
Journalist have too high an opinion of themselves. They publish things from "anonymous" sources (made up, fake but accurate) and then hide behind the 1st to avoid getting caught. They spin facts to meet their political agendas (which they all have...ever
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The real question you should be asking is why Federal Tax money is being used to pay for Local State police cars in the first place? Original crime or no, that in itself is wrong.
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No, there is no slippery slope. (Score:4, Interesting)
What is a journalist? In an era when every single one of us "publishes" online, why aren't we all journalists? Given that we are, by any sane definition, all we have to do whenever subpoenaed is assert our right as journalists to keep our information to ourselves just in case we want to publish them.
Even prior to this era, shield laws created a special, unregulated, class of citizen: "The Journalist." Unlike every other type of American, Journalists are permitted to keep secrets without oversight. While the government is supposed to conduct all it's operations in public, while celebrities have no expectation of privacy whatsoever, while intimate details of all of our lives have alway been available to anyone who wandered down to the county courthouse, we have decided that noble Journalists are uniquely trustworthy and do not require any scrutiny of their motives and actions?
Feh.
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It says first what the government can do (Articles), what they cannot (Bill of Rights), then says the states can choose to restrict rights as they see fit (Penal Codes). Anything else remains a right.
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And the only party gaining from that approach is the powers that be. Lobbying to change the law is completely ineffective (because the other side has more and better lobbyists), and those who support the law are happy that their coercive laws are being obeyed, and nothing changes. "Obey the law and work to change it" is the RIAAs way of saying "Let them
National Writer's Union has it backwards here (Score:2, Interesting)
Except in this case Josh is the one trying to hide information. If that tape got out the "peaceful" protestor's PR spin of doing nothing wrong would be shattered.
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.
B.S. (Score:2)
Since all anyone has is his word it showed nothing, yet he also seemed to be protective of the people who hurt the officer, the court was right to find him in contempt.
You sir are wrong... (Score:5, Informative)
In a televised interview on February 9, 2007, Wolf and his attorney, Martin Garbus...
Wolf stated during his portion of the interview via phone from prison that he has offered to allow the judge to review "in camera" the raw footage to determine if there's any applicable evidence within the video and the U.S. Attorney's office refused the offer based on a legal technicality. Wolf also said that the raw video doesn't offer any more applicable evidence of the arson or assault charges.
It sounds like a witch hunt and you sound just like another poster who needs a good whack with a clue stick.
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Down the page just before the video.
http://joshwolf.net/blog/ [joshwolf.net]
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He did. But I guess you can't be hassled to look into the facts before you call the tragedy of him being held for nearly a year justified.
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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.
This is simply cops doing their job. When the non-mainsteam opinion is linked with violent crimes, a cop should be able to keep track of public actions and expressions. ( If the crime were, say, the gay-bashing and subsequent death of the guy in Wyoming, shall we deny the cops the ability to keep track of public anti-gay
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The purpose of a shield law is to allow people to speak privately to journalist ( and BTW, I'll agree that Wolf qualifies as a journalist ). If he has private interviews of the rioters, they should be protected. If he personally knows the rioters - and there are reasonable claims that he does - that information is private and should be protected.
But the riots were a public act. Wolf taped them as anyone - including the cops - could
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Further comments about the distinction between public and private:
The purpose of a shield law is to allow people to speak privately to journalist ( and BTW, I'll agree that Wolf qualifies as a journalist ). If he has private interviews of the rioters, they should be protected. If he personally knows the rioters - and there are reasonable claims that he does - that information is private and should be protected.
But the riots were a public act. Wolf taped them as anyone - including the cops - could have.
The real question here is: should a journalist should be allowed to take something that is public and make it private, and then claim protection under privacy laws?
Why is it that nobody here is bothering to read the background on this story? This case has NOTHING AT ALL TO DO WITH THE VIDEO FOOTAGE. Good god, when are you going to learn to actually read something before you post.
Wolf offered to release the tape multiple times. The stumbling block has always been that he was ordered to essentially provide a profile to the secret grand jury about all the people he knew of that were at the riot. This part had nothing at all to do with the damaged police car and everythi
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Wolf offered to release the tape multiple times. The stumbling block has always been that he was ordered to essentially provide a profile to the secret grand jury about all the people he knew of that were at the riot. This part had nothing at all to do with the damaged police car and everything to do with the government wanting to know who the political dissidents are
I mostly agree with the above that this is about "the government wanting to know who the political dissidents are." But this is not neccesarily a problem. They ought to be able to do that if their aims are crime-solving and not political.
As the GGP says, "This is simply cops doing their job. When the non-mainsteam opinion is linked with violent crimes, a cop shou
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He was not. Read his comments again: the prosecutors refused to only accept the tape. He had to agree to identify the protestors on the video as well. So he was willing to do what you said; the prosecutors were not. They were fishing.
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It's a good thing Woodward and Bernstein weren't filming their conversations with Deep Throat... After all, it was a public parking garage, and, presumably, the police potentially could have been recording that, in some way.
How is it that the right to pr
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And the fact that the particular media is video is not relevant. He should turn over any media if the subjects had no reasonable expectation
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Your excuses to justify your opinion have NO basis in reality. There is no legal recognition of privacy, no matter how sneaky you intend to be, in a public space.
The only expectation of privacy is the recognized right of the press to not be compelled to reveal sources, and that absolutely applies just as much in public, as it does in private.
You're obvi
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Now, they might stop some of the illegal acts... great.
However, they might also decide to do stuff to the innocent people they have compromised. Say they find out you wear women's underwear. The officer involved decides to blackmail you with this
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What I meant to post was....
Journalist: a person who keeps a journal, diary, or other record of daily events.
Blogger: a person who keeps a Web log (blog) or publish an online diary
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I'd say it should only be a person who has some sort of formal education in journalism (ethics, critical thinking etc.) and does it as their sole occupation.
Maybe the question should be who is not a journalist.
I think that's exactly right. (Score:2)
Consider: I videotape my buddy raping a girl, and I publish it on Youtube but I black out his face. What sane society would prevent the cops from locking me up till I produced my buddy's name? Similarly, what if the year is 1970 and I just took notes describing the rape and I published them in some mimeographed pamphlet?
The first amendment is not a blanket for covering up crimes.
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In other words: what your describing would be illegal for anyone in the country, whether or not they claimed to be a journalist.
You're already protected in that case. (Score:2)
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I think thats what I said (or what I meant at any rate)...
In your original example there is no way someone could use their status as 'press' to prevent legal action. I see your original point about letting people get away with things just because they're considered 'press', but I can't think of any good examples- I can't buy
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Re:Blogger jailed? (Score:5, Informative)
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Any reasonable person can see that this is not a federal matter, that it should be 'tried' (it's at grand jury stage) in a California court and that California's shield law should therefore apply.
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And 231 years of US history says you are wrong.
Sure the 10th amendment seems pretty clear... there are many work arounds both legislative and judicial that have caused federal law to trump state and local.
His blog (Score:2)
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Re:When your news content model consists of merely (Score:5, Interesting)
Did you bother reading the article? This guy was not just a blogger who got the latest digg.com headlines and commented on them. He had a camera and went down in the trenches to obtain original footage. Yet he is not registered as a journalist.
But the thing most people here miss -- even if he was a journalist they could still have jailed him. The law protects him from local police investigations, not from Federal investigations. He was easy prey.
On the other hand... WTF dude, a cop was almost killed and you refuse to hand over the tape?
Re:When your news content model consists of merely (Score:5, Informative)
Look into it a bit more. That assault is not the issue. This case was pushed by a federal prosecutor who was not out to provide justice for that police officer (a California state employee, who is protected under California law). He was out to label these protestors terrorists. Which is absurd, and chilling -- something worth resisting. Almost everyone is conflating the assault with the contempt-of-court finding, but they are different.
As I said above, "A political protest that turns savage is an example of a good thing gone bad. But it is not terrorism."
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But, yeah, there were other witnessess to the crime, so I don't entirely get why they were going after him so hard. Nor why it become a federal matter in the first place.
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That's it exactly - I don't understand that. Does that mean that the kids putting grafitti on the I-64 overpass near my house are committing a federal crime? I'm going to doubt that anyone is going to claim that, so why is this any different?
Note:People (here & the media) keep bringing up the cop t
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If my testifying about that incident would expose other people to more serious problems, then too bad for them and me?
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He obviously had reasons for not giving it up. It could be that there was other information on the same tape he didn't want prosecutors to see. It could be that it was terribly inconvenient to provide the video. It could be that there was nothing on the video in the first place. Or heck, it could be that he video taped himself vandalizi
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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
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No, they'll call you a journalist and throw you in jail on a contempt charge until you confess, however many years that may take.
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Thus leading to the invention of the witness protection program. Known bug, tagging WONTFIX. If this outcome is not satisfying, submit an amendment to the charter permitting people to be charged without evidence, please do not reopen.
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Then what don't you understand about the fact that there were apparently also other political activists (who did not attack the cop) in the video?
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2. If you take your argument to its most logical conclusion, then no one should get journalistic protection, journalists would constantly be harassed into turning over their sources due to some social need/homeland security issue, and the media would finally completely transform into just a mouthpiece for government goodspeak/doublespe
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The reason I mentioned it is because so many posters above have said "how dare he withhold a tape that shows a felony being committ
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Do you typically go around publishing a written account for the world to see about every little event you witness in daily life? Likely not! I've witnessed car crashes, a couple younger students getting in a fist-fight in front of a school and many other things in just the last few months, and never published stories about ANY of those things.
So in all of these case, it's clear I wouldn't be
How is this insightful? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:How is this insightful? (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh, and the fact that the government was willing to take over the case from California State officials, claiming that the case belonged in Federal jurisdiction because the SF police department receive a little Homeland Security money, shows just how far the government was willing to go to do an end-run around the California shield law.
Grand jury (Score:2)
...the footage this guy was withholding did not contain the alleged crimes authorities are investigating, and he had told them from the beginning that that was the case.
That may be true, but it does not get to the guts of the issue, which is who gets to make that decision? Are we really going to grant a journalist the ability to say "I don't think it is relevant to your case, so you can't have it" ?
Somebody has to decide if the footage is relevant, and it should be an impartial party - not the jounalist, not the cops. This is why we have grand juries.
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Actually, that's why we have judges. Judges decide matters of law. And the tape was offered to the judge to view so that he could see there was no evidentiary value to it, it was the government attorneys who refused to allow the judge to view the evidence.
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Only as long as he doesn't actively protect a crinimal, which is what the GJ is about. He (this guy) was a witness, not a defendant.
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But isn't this a mis-application of the journalistic shield? The state laws that allow for such a defense apply to sources, so that people can feel safe creating a dialogue with a journalist and feed information that the public has a right to know. The identities that Wolf was protecting are
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They make it appear as if the problem is he the government jailed him to stop information in the video from getting out. When In fact it is the opposite.
And yes, I see no problem with the police getting access to information of an event surrounding a violent assault with willful destruction of property. Even If the guy claims there is nothing to see on it. But the thing is access, This doesn't mean the government is going to take it and never return
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.
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No. What you can say is it hasn't produced results. No extreme liberties were taken. He refused to comply with a testimony order and, like thousands before him, sat in jail awaiting the time he would or they decided they didn't need it any more for some reason. Perfe
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.
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I personally think it's ridiculous, tyrannical, and draconian that anyone can be forced to say anything.
If I witness a murder, and I don't want to talk about it, well... that's too bad. it's not my job to be an investigator, and perhaps I have very good reasons for not talking. Such as, self preservation.
But you think it's ok for the government to force me to risk my life for their judicial system? To force me to enter a witness protection program?
If not, then why shou
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WTF? That's how it's supposed to work! Information must flow from the government to the people, not the other way around; otherwise it perpetuates tyranny.
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If you're the parent poster, or you have ever posted something like that, then you computer should fry itself. You do not deserve it. Your very presence should make computers homicidal(towards you) or suicidal.
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let me guess your age... 13 at max. If you're going to act like an asshole, at least think of something original and get yourself a real ID. At least then I would know who to add to my list of people to ignore.
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Sorry, but it is parent post that is relevacy challenged.
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regardless it didn't sound like he was being asked to testify on what he saw that day, they had witness to that. Sounds more like they wanted his background on the people involved.
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"This is NOT the same thing as the government suppressing journalism or controlling what information reaches the public as this is spun to sound. "What this is is wanting to identify the people who were legally protesting, so that official and unofficial lists are updated. It would have a chilling effect, though.
"...they're asking him to show them evidence that could lead to the arrest of criminals."Repeating t
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A better concept (Score:2)
It is not necessarily in your interests as a (scare quote) journalist (scare quote) to speak up. I can think of no better way than to get treated as a plant than to start narcing on you sources. Then what would get published?
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Really? I don't think we do. You saying I have no common sense? Me? I think you're too paranoid which is affecting your commons sense.
"Private citizens should judge the law and resist injustice."
They should also not whine about the results. By the way, what 'injustice' was there in the authorities wanting to arrest the felons?
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The same thing could be said about French Resistance fighters and Gestapo officers. Or Hungarian freedom fighters and Soviet KGB officers. Or heck... American Revolutionaries and British soldiers.
We throw those "anarchists" up on pedestals but when the same thing happens here we call them villains and criminals.
Personally, I don't beli
It is **NOT** a police investigation (Score:2, Interesting)
He isn't withholding information from a police investigation because this isn't a police investigation. It's a federal terrorism investigation. The federal prosecutor is alleging that these people have engaged in terrorism. That is a repulsive accusation: the truth is, the video shows a sad case of a political protest turned violent. Protest is a first amendment liberty ("petition for redress"), and the violence here was a bad thing. But there is no way to color this picture as terrorism.
The assault
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
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What makes you think that these journalists don't exist? I have not heard of this person outside of Slashdot and I do read the newspapers.
Here's are couple such people that you are asking about:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/06/27/AR2005062700489_pf.html [washingtonpost.com]
http://www.americanpressinstitute.org/pages/resour ces/2004/11/journalists_need_a_get [americanpr...titute.org]
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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 constitut
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In my mind, Josh *is* a hero of a contemporary sort! I agree he was used as a "pawn", but only in government's attempt to railroad citizens into "on demand compliance" with whatever orders they feel like placing.
Why is a publisher of a "blog" any less of a "journalist" than another writer? You think the term should be narrowly defined to people who get published only to dead-tree media!? In the