Blogger Freed After 226 Days in Jail For Contempt

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 California's shield law allows reporters to keep sources and unpublished material secret.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.'"

Comments

What am i missing?

[sumdumass]

"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.'"

I thought this case was about a video blogger not giving the cops a video of some people damaging a cop car and setting it on fire. Now about the government suppressing information.

I think the only "suppressing information" going on here is the wolf guy's insistence on protecting thugs who torched the cop car by not turning the video over. And I'm wondering why they he won't turn it over, he said it doesn't show anything. Seems to me he should just require the prosecutors to pay a reasonable fee for every time the video or excerpts show up on the news and let them see the damn thing.

I bet two things would have happened, the prosecutor would make sure it doesn't show up anywhere the wolf guy didn't approve of and the case against him which was not letting them see what they think was evidence would have been dropped. This clown spent a good amount of time in jail because of his own wishes. I don't have any sympathy for him. Especially when the Union tries to spin it in a way that isn't related to the case.

protection of sources

[timmarhy]

Protection of sources does not extend to people who have committed a crime. this jerk wad filmed a bunch of people vandalising a car and hitting a cop. why should they be protected because he wrote a piece about it? they weren't interviewed, they aren't some secret source. this guys just an attention whore, and i hope he rots in jail and gets a few visits from the "sisters" for protecting these fucks.

Re:Delicate Balance

[russotto]

Simple. Obey, and lobby to change the laws you don't like afterwards. It's legal, it's safe, and it encourages diversity among the political environment.

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 eat cake".

If the law is broken, at least those who got it put in place are denied some of its benefits to them. If it is broken more or less openly, they also lose their appearance of being in control. They are too powerful to be defeated, but by breaking their laws, they can be denied total victory.

Re:Excuse me but

[guruevi]

You're getting it all wrong. Let me tell you why: So apparently any time you don't want to tell the authorities something that someone else told you, all you have to do is say "but I'm a blogger!".

You don't have to tell the authorities anything, anytime. It is the right to remain silent and everything you say can and will be used against you clause of the rights read to you when you are arrested, it's in the constitution, it's in many other laws.

Journalists are anyone who run newspapers, write for newspapers, or create a piece to be published in a newspaper. Newspapers can also be online, like blogs could be considered the school newspaper, not the best, but still enough for the journalists to write their story in. Do you think that Walter Cronkite cared? No, it was probably just a job where he had a little textarea on his computer screen where he could spew his thoughts or observations about what happened.

Now, the case of point is, if I report on our oppressive government, I should be able to publish that without any reproof from them. If people read what I say they can agree, care, not care, that's up to the viewer/reader and the journalist just hopes that it will have some impact to work against our oppressive government. Now if I do the same thing, but I get put into jail for it, that's not good, since you can't read it nor agree/disagree with my opinion. The government can keep on killing people everywhere and keep spying on us without any exposure, that's not a good idea, since if a person or body of persons thinks they can get away with something, it will become more behaviour than once-in-a-while.

The problem with this person was, that the government tries to spy on us by collecting background information on the leaders of peace-rally's and other conventions of people (which is by the way totally constitutional) so that in the future, might that certain $group-for-$right become big and a threat to the oppressive government (trying to overthrow it or something, which is again, constitutional), they can eliminate it silently and keep on doing their dirty deeds thus undermining the effectiveness of the constitution which people died (and still die) for protecting. Yes, it's our right (empowered by the constitution) to organize and throw over the ruling government and install a new president.

The other problem was, that the legal way apparently wasn't good enough for our dear government, so they tucked him away, hoping it would cool off and he would turn over the 'evidence'. He kept on saying no, he worked with the government as much as possible, even offering the judge to decide whether or not the evidence was to be overturned. Why was that? we can only speculate. Was it not in the governments best interest to let the judge decide? Was there actually no evidence, and were they just looking into collecting more data on our good citizens? Was there certain police action involved that they didn't want the world to see?

Your arguments are moot. We have the right to become a journalist, whether we write for the NY Times, the local paper, a school paper or an online paper, we have the right to observe our governments actions and criticize it. We have the right to remain silent and not incriminate ourselves or the people we interview, so that they, if they are working on a secret plan to overthrow the government, have the opportunity to do so and not get shut down prematurely by 'accident' or other means (being marked as terrorist and shipped of to a country no-one ever heard of).