The Josh Wolf Case as a Warning

Josh Wolf’s case is a warning to independent journalists and bloggers. If you don’t have the protection of a news organization to vouch for you, you’re prey to the U.S. government.
Josh Wolf getting arrested for not turning in his video footage is wrong. The federal government doesn’t really care about him. As stated on the joshwolf.net website, the government wanted the tape to find anarchists. If the government was able to get the anarchists, then they would be used as an example for anyone who didn’t support the G8 summit. This is not even really about the G8 summit but about the protesters being against an action of the Bush administration.
Wolf is currently the perfect candidate for being the longest-incarcerated journalist. At 24, he still has his whole life ahead of him. He is apparently well known in the San Francisco area for covering protesters. In considering all of these facts about Wolf, the federal government figures that he is perfect to follow. He is the prototype for someone who would be against the Bush administration: young and liberal. The fact that he is from San Francisco, a politically liberal city, just further proves what they think of him. It doesn’t matter that Josh Wolf is a journalist who is, as part of the criteria for a journalist, has to be fair and unbiased. The fact that Wolf was at the protest covering the event in the first place may show the federal government that Wolf supports the protesters cause, and this is why he has been refusing to hand over the video footage. Even if Wolf was not a protester himself, in the mentality of the U.S. government, he must have known some of the protesters. Basically, the government wants Wolf to be a tattletale, and he is being punished for not telling what he knows and by not telling what he knows, Wolf is just as guilty as the protesters.
In its defense, the U.S. District Court thinks that there should be arson charges brought against some of the protesters because they were suspected of planning on damaging a police car by firing a bottle rocket under it. Now, it is not as if the protesters actually did that to the police car. It’s just possible that they were thinking of maybe, kind of, sort of damaging the car. This is proof that the government’s charges are bogus because the government needed an excuse to arrest the protesters. The District Court says that the reason why the federal government got involved is because the police car was partly funded by the U.S. government.
Wolf should not feel too bad, for all of this, though. On the one hand, he has the blemish of a prison sentence on his record for the rest of his life, but there is a positive side to this. Wolf has gained the respect of many journalists. There is a long list of prestigious organizations such as the National Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, and the American Civil Liberties Union who support his cause. Wolf is also getting numerous awards such as the Society of Journalists Freedom of Information Award and the James Madison Award for Online Free Speech. There are also numerous petitions and blogs supporting Wolf’s cause.
According to Wolf’s point of view, he feels justified in refusing the subpoena because he thinks it violates his ability to gather news as an independent reporter. This brings up the topic of whether or not the government thinks of Wolf as a real reporter in the first place. Obviously, if the federal government really thought of Wolf as a legitimate reporter, then he probably would not have been arrested, and even if Wolf was arrested, he would not have been in jail for this long. What happened to Wolf is a warning that just because you pick up a video camera or a tape recorder to cover an event does not necessarily make you a journalist, especially to the federal government. If Wolf was a reporter from a news organization, especially a prestigious one such as CNN or The New York Times, he probably would have been treated much differently. For example, former New York Times reporter Judith Miller only stayed in jail for 85 days for her involvement in the Valerie Plame scandal. At the time, 85 days seemed like a long time, but it’s relatively short compared to the almost 200 days (and counting) time Josh Wolf is spending behind bars. Sadly, for Wolf, it doesn’t seem like there are any plans to get him out of prison anytime soon, but with the Judith Miller case, it seemed like there was an assumption that if she had to do any jail time, it wouldn’t be for long.
Not everyone thinks that Josh Wolf is a hero or a martyr for the cause of Internet journalism. A person responding to an online article on Wolf thinks that he should “rot in jail” because he is keeping evidence for a criminal investigation. The person compared Wolf to someone who has witnessed a violent crime but withholds information from the authorities. To finish the post off, the person said that Wolf is an accessory to the crime. Honestly, this person makes it seem like Wolf had committed murder, but in some folks’ eyes, Wolf was not complying with the federal government, and that is criminal enough.
What is even more interesting about Josh Wolf’s case is how little it is being covered in the news media. The Judith Miller issue certainly got a lot more coverage, which is understandable because it directly dealt with the federal government. At the same time, the Josh Wolf case should get just as much coverage. People, and especially young people and journalists, need to look at the Wolf situation to see that they could be arrested if they use their video cameras in certain places, and as extreme as it may sound, even the federal government may get involved. Surely Wolf knew the risk of getting arrested when he would film protests, but it is doubtful that he knew that the national government would have him arrested and jailed. Wolf’s case brings up the question of whether or not internet bloggers like Wolf are just as much journalists as Katie Couric and Charles Gibson. It seems like, at least according to the U.S. government’s handling of the Wolf case, internet bloggers cannot have the same rights as traditional journalists, and if this is the case, the millions of bloggers on cyberspace have a lot to worry about.