Blogger Jailed After Defying Court Orders - New York Times

Whoa! Is this ominous or what? Couple of things jump out at me in the article below:

One, could there be a federal law enforcement (and anti-terrorism spooks) strategy to deliberately target unaffiliated freelance journalists and bloggers as unwitting contributors to an intelligence-gathering dragnet, because they don't have the backing of large corporations behind them? Some states have shield laws, but there is no federal shield law, as the article points out.

Two, is the net effect of such action a way to rein in under-funded independent journalism, the source of most of the less homogenous voices in the US media landscape? A chilling effect? To "purify" the media landscape of information sources that haven't been fully "sanitized for your protection"? Defacto state censorship by subpoena? Hey, if Susan McDougal could be locked up for a year on one guy's whim...

And finally, could you imagine such subpoena power being used to squelch potential whistle-blowers, rather than prosecute those who have the whistles blown on them? The idea makes me a bit nervous.

See, my problem is that journalist "shield laws" tend to "professionalize" journalism with borders, gates, credentials, things that ordinary citizen journalists don't have. I love the citizen journalism movement, so I don't support such an approach, making a "special class" of eyeballs to cover stories. I think ordinary eyeballs, witnesses, investigators, ought to be good enough. If there are shield laws, they ought to apply to anyone. But a set of everyone tends to make the category moot.

Instead, what we may be trying to say is that the right to BEAR WITNESS and REPORT are as much a part of the basic Bill of Rights of every person as are the rights to expression, assembly, and religious belief. Subject, of course, to the same libel laws and standards of truth (the primary defense against libel) as "professional" journalists are.

Maybe the bigger questions should dwell on defining what are the most appropriate uses of subpoenas in a free society.

Link: Blogger Jailed After Defying Court Orders - New York Times.

Blogger Jailed After Defying Court Orders

By JESSE McKINLEY

Published: August 2, 2006

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 1 — A freelance journalist and blogger was jailed on Tuesday after refusing to turn over video he took at an anticapitalist protest here last summer and after refusing to testify before a grand jury looking into accusations that crimes were committed at the protest.

The freelancer, Josh Wolf, 24, was taken into custody just before noon after a hearing in front of Judge William Alsup of Federal District Court. Found in contempt, Mr. Wolf was later moved to a federal prison in Dublin, Calif., and could be imprisoned until next summer, when the grand jury term expires, said his lawyer, Jose Luis Fuentes.

Earlier this year, federal prosecutors subpoenaed Mr. Wolf to testify before a grand jury and turn over video from the demonstration, held in the Mission District on July 8, 2005. The protest, tied to a Group of 8 meeting of world economic leaders in Scotland, ended in a clash between demonstrators and the San Francisco police, with one officer sustaining a fractured skull.

[...]

Mr. Wolf, who posted some of the edited video on his Web site, www.joshwolf.net, and sold some of it to local television stations, met with investigators, who wanted to see the raw video. But Mr. Wolf refused to hand over the tapes, arguing that he had the right as a journalist to shield his sources.

On Tuesday, Judge Alsup disagreed, ruling that the grand jury “has a legitimate need” to see what Mr. Wolf filmed.

[...]

Jane Kirtley, a professor of media ethics and law at the University of Minnesota, said that although the jailing of journalists had become more common, Mr. Wolf’s case was the first she had heard of in which a blogger had been pursued and eventually jailed by federal authorities.

“There is a tendency on the part of the prosecutors to go aggressively after people not perceived to have a big gun behind them,” Ms. Kirtley said. “They are the most vulnerable links in the chain.”

While California has a so-called shield law meant to protect journalists and their sources, no such law exists at the federal level. Even if there was such a law, Ms. Kirtley said, it is unclear whether a blogger and freelancer would fall under it.

[...]

Mr. Wolf has attracted supporters, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, which introduced a resolution objecting to the federal government’s role in the investigation. The Society of Professional Journalists contributed to Mr. Wolf’s legal defense fund.

Mr. Fuentes said he had already prepared an appeal and would file it immediately.

[...]