I can’t stop thinking about this journalist who is in prison. His name is Josh Wolf and as of today, he became the LONGEST INCARCERATED JOURNALIST IN U.S. HISTORY FOR FAILURE TO COMPLY WITH A SUBPOENA. It’s really scary that a judge could lock up a journalist for not revealing his source to the court. He is being held in contempt of court for refusing to turn over video tapes that revealed the identity of members of an anti-war protest. The Feds say that the reason is because he won’t provide them with information related to an anarchist group. But the reality is…this is a matter of journalistic ethics. A journalist, be they a citizen journalist, a blogger, or an employed staff writer for a major publication, must be free to report on the news without fear of censure. Journalists are third-parties. They are independent, and it is reasonable that they should be able to protect their sources. Who would say anything to a journalist if everything they said was something that would later be used against them?
It’s hard to believe we are living in a democracy when San Francisco journalists can be jailed. As a young San Francisco writer and freelance journalist, I really identify with his struggle. What if it were me? How would I fair 160 days at the Federal Detention Center in Dublin for refusing to testify? Would I crack and give up my moral beliefs? Would I allow them to soften my anti-war stance by giving in, just once, just for a moment? It’s amazing to see this brave young person hold to his ideals.
This year the Society of Professional Journalists gave me and my classmates an award for a radio series we created on redevelopment in Oakland. We got to attend the awards dinner with all the big shot journalists. I sat next to a table with some very nice people. It turns out that the table next to us was the mother of Josh Wolf and his best friends. They were there because the Society of Professional Journalists of Northern California presented an award to Josh. It was no small award. He won Journalist of the Year. His friends seemed cool, like normal young people. They seemed like people I would be friends with. Like normal San Franciscans. I imagined he would be the same. I had never heard of this case until I went to the awards dinner. It was not being covered in the main stream TV news, and I missed it on SF Gate. Now is luckily getting some more attention.
But what struck me was that he won Journalist of the Year. This was heartening to me, in the face of how the media is changing and how many journalists are losing their jobs as corperate conglomerates further consolidate. Even Judith Miller, who was jailed last year for failing to reveal her source, shmarmy as she is, even though she helped beat the gong of going to war in her New York Times articles, even she came out in support of Wolf. (Though I have my qualms with Judtih Miller, I agree that she should not be jailed). I hope that journalists will continue to rally behind the fight to report the truth. For the sake of the future of news and truth in this country, and in the new age. But more importantly, aside from being a free-lance journalist, Josh Wolf is a blogger. And this raises all sorts of important questions like: Is a blogger a journalist? Is a free-lance writer a journalist? Peter Laur raises this important question, and follows it up with a third pithy question: “Is someone who sits in a studio and reads news dispatches over the airwaves that are written by others a journalist?”
I think that anybody who writes dispatches from their lives can be a journalist. It’s both exciting and scary that bloggers can be seen as journalists, and that they could wield enough power to be seen as a threat. But the reality remains that this is an attempt by the few to squash the voices of the many. It’s a way for the powers that be to scare bloggers, isolate them from speaking out. It’s yet another way to silence political dissent, as if we didn’t have enough ways of squashing dissent already?
This guerrilla warfare against journalists must be stopped. Keeping Josh Wolf in jail is an act of terrorism against the truth. Free Josh Wolf!
