Joshua Wolf cuts a deal for his freedom
A young video blogger ended up with some footage of an anti-G8 rally in SF that the Federal Govt. wanted to look at and he refused, claiming journalistic license, and went to jail. He has released the video now which you can see here. In it you can see Left Coast types getting a little riled up, and eventually, SFPD getting a little riled up, as one might expect. It is always interesting to witness the ‘no nonsense’ re-establishment of control. The footage seems to fall short of being a potential smoking gun though. Surely cases like this will become more prevelent in the future.
Curious, but is that a “sellout” tone in your title? I mean, the guy did 200 days in jail for a video that didn’t give the authorities anything. He held out and made his point. How long should he rot in jail to prove that “bloggers are journalists”? (which I totally think that they are)
No ’sell out’ tone at all. He told them the footage wasn’t worth anything to them, did the longest jail term by a journalist in US history, then they saw the footage and that he was telling the truth all along. That’s rock solid integrity.
The term ‘cuts a deal’ is simply common legalese. Something like 85% of US criminal court cases end in plea bargaining, much more succinctly than this one. Even as backed up as the system is, it could NEVER handle the case load if every case had to go on to a jury trial.