Josh Wolf (journalist)
Joshua Selassie "Josh" Wolf[1] (born June 8, 1982) is an American freelance journalist and internet videoblogger[2] who was jailed by a Federal district court on August 1, 2006, for refusing to turn over a collection of videotapes he recorded during a July 2005 demonstration in San Francisco, California.
His parents, Len Harrison and Liz Wolf, divorced when he was a young child; he grew up in Wrightwood, California with his mother, an elementary school teacher.
Later that same night, and over the next few days, Wolf edited his footage and posted the video to a local activist news website, Bay Area Indymedia, or Indybay.
Other activists who posted video and photographs to the Bay Area Indymedia website were contacted by the FBI seeking their original source materials, but it is unknown how many, if any, turned over their recordings to Federal authorities.
His case was picked up by the National Lawyers Guild who asked a federal magistrate in San Francisco to block the grand jury subpoena, arguing that taking such action would have a chilling effect on other journalists covering future protests.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup rejected this argument and ordered Wolf be jailed on August 1, 2006 for contempt of court until he complied.
Wolf remained in jail for a total of 226 days, the longest time a U.S. journalist has been held in contempt for refusing to divulge sources or unpublished material.
With permission from the prosecution, U.S. District Judge William Alsup signed an order requiring Wolf's release from the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, California.
[4] There were a number of important legal issues at dispute in this case, including: Wolf argued that first amendment protections allow journalists to refuse to comply when a grand jury is not conducted in good faith.
Specifically, Wolf believes that the government wants his video tapes to help them identify people who were participating in the protests, not for actual footage of a crime that was committed.
On February 28, 2007, syndicated columnist Debra Saunders attacked the credibility of Wolf's arguments, namely the lack of an expectation of privacy of those he was filming.
After Josh Wolf took a job as a general assignment reporter at the Palo Alto Daily Post in 2008, he had some choice words for critics who have questioned his claim of being a journalist.
