08/05/06

Journalists in San Francisco protest growing pressure to reveal sources


SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Journalism groups decried the jailing of a video journalist and other recent court rulings pressuring media workers to divulge information to the government.

The news media becomes an information-gathering arm of law enforcement when journalists are ordered to give up confidential sources or unpublished material, said Tony Overman, president of the National Press Photographers Association.

"When news sources believe that statements or actions observed or reported by journalists find their way into the hands of police or prosecutors, those sources will be less willing — or flat-out afraid — to cooperate with the media," Overman said at a news conference Aug. 5.

The photographers association and the Society of Professional Journalists announced they would help pay for the legal defense of freelance video journalist Joshua Wolf, 24.

Wolf was jailed Aug. 1 for refusing to give a grand jury his unpublished footage from a July 2005 demonstration in which anarchists were suspected of vandalizing a police car. A police officer was injured.

Wolf sold the footage to San Francisco television stations and posted it on his Web site. He could remain behind bars until next summer, when the grand jury investigating the incident is due to expire.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup said there is no federal law shielding journalists from participating in grand jury investigations. The judge sided with prosecutors who suspect the unpublished material may reveal who was behind the incident, part of an anarchist-led protest over the G-8 international economic conference last year in Scotland.

"This is direct evidence of what happened," Alsup said.

Alsup said he wasn't jailing Wolf to punish him. "The purpose of this is to get you to change your mind," the judge said.

Wolf's lawyer, Jose Luis Fuentes, said turning over the unpublished information would amount to Wolf becoming "an arm of the government." Because of the subpoena, Fuentes said the underground groups Wolf chronicles are denying him access.

The journalist groups said recent court actions have violated First Amendment rights and eroded the news media's ability to serve as a public-interest watchdog.

San Francisco Chronicle reporters Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada are fighting a federal subpoena that would force them to reveal the source of leaked grand jury testimony in the steroid investigation involving Giants slugger Barry Bonds.

Former New York Times reporter Judith Miller was jailed for 85 days last year for refusing to testify in an investigation into the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame's name.

Journalists were also incarcerated in 2004, 2001, 2000, 1996 and 1994.

"We must stand together as journalists, scholars, educators and American citizens for freedom of the press, on behalf of our country," said Julianne Newton, a professor at the University of Oregon's journalism school.

Miller attempted to interview Wolf on Aug. 5 at the federal detention facility in Dublin but was turned away by guards.

"I was just there to express my personal moral support for him," Miller told The Associated Press. "When I went to jail I had The New York Times behind me and a lot of publicity, and Josh Wolf did not have any of that. Anybody who looks at this trend has got to be worried about the obstacles being thrown in the way of a free and open press."

Wolf's attorney, Jose Luis Fuentes, said jail officials also blocked him from seeing his client until Aug. 5. Wolf remains steadfast in refusing to surrender the footage, Fuentes said.

"It smells and appears to be punishment, which is not what the civil contempt order is about — it's about coercion," he said. "If he can't make phone calls to his mother or have visits from his mother, and he is denied visits from his attorney, it would seem that's all punishment."

Officials at the correctional facility said attorneys are allowed in seven days a week, as well as inmates' immediate family.

Reporters need to submit a request to visit to the warden, and have it reviewed — something Miller did not do, said Bill Kubitz, spokesman for the facility. He doesn't know why Wolf's attorney would have been turned away.

The American Civil Liberties Union said federal authorities are disregarding California's shield law, which generally allows journalists to decline to divulge unpublished material to state authorities. That shield, however, does not attach to federal investigations.

Although the incident involved San Francisco police, federal authorities are investigating because federally funded property was affected.

"We're taking the position that the government hasn't shown it has a connection to a legitimate federal interest here," ACLU attorney Alan Schlosser said after the two-hour hearing.