So, 24 year-old Josh Wolf attends a protest rally with a camcorder and documents the event. At the protest things got a little violent. A San Francisco police officer ended up with his skull fractured and his car on fire. The city decides they want all of Wolf's footage. Wolf says he didn't shoot anything of value to the prosecution and refuses to turn over the tape to authorities. He is put in jail for contempt of court. He's now been there for months. He did offer to show the tape to the judge, so he/she could determine whether there is evidence of any crime on the tape. However, this offer was refused. Wolf believes that he has already posted to the web all the footage of any news value. Thanks to the government disagreeing with him, he's in jail. The real story is that that the police want to use him as an arm of big brother. They want to be able to grab evidence gathered by reporters to help them do their job better. The catch is, reporters must be able to protect their sources or they won't have any sources and therefore no way to report certain stories involving what may considered illegal acts. Ultimately, in my opinion, what this boils down to is the police/government not wanting to do their job and gather their own evidence. If Wolf wanted to help them, great, but since he doesn't, they shouldn't be able to put him in jail, they should shut up and do their job--find evidence elsewhere. Why? Because the next time any protesters see a camera on them, they'll run--whether they're committing a crime or not. That's the effect this has. Read more about it in [http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/12/1540208|the transcript from the February 12, 2007 podcast from Democracy Now] available at DemocracyNow.org. Or you can check out JoshWolf.net to follow his adventures trying to get out of jail. Good luck, Josh! All of us independent journalists are pulling for ya! (Hey, according to Webster.Com, [http://www.webster.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?sourceid=Mozilla-search&va=journalist|I'm a journalist], damn it!)
Orignal From: Big Brother Week: DISSENTING JOURNALISTS
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