First Amendment martyr?

Josh Wolf tells Salon why he spent 226 days in prison rather than comply with a subpoena, and gives his take on what a "journalist" is.

By Alex Koppelman

Read more: First Amendment, FBI, Politics, Supreme Court, News, Alex Koppelman

Photo: ZUMA Press City

Josh Wolf answers reporters' questions outside the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, Calif., after being released on April 3, 2007.

April 13, 2007 | Over the past seven and a half months, 24-year-old video blogger Josh Wolf has gone from being a young political activist with a camera to one of journalism's better-known -- and most controversial -- martyrs. When he walked out of a federal prison in Dublin, Calif., on April 3, he held the American record for most time served behind bars for refusing to give up source material.

On July 8, 2005, Josh Wolf was at the scene of an anarchist demonstration in San Francisco's Mission District that turned violent. Someone fractured a police officer's skull with an unknown object, and protesters allegedly tried to set the same officer's car on fire. Wolf, who maintains a video blog called the Revolution Will Be Televised, videotaped the protest. He posted parts of his tape on the Indybay Web site, and sold part to a local TV station. A federal grand jury began looking into the riot, and in 2006, it issued a subpoena to Wolf, seeking the unreleased portions of his footage, as well as his testimony. He refused to comply with the subpoena, and on Aug. 1, 2006, was held in contempt of court. He was imprisoned until Aug. 31, when he was allowed to post bail, but was imprisoned again in mid-September of that year. He was held there until April 3 of this year, when prosecutors dropped their demand that he testify and Wolf handed over the full video.

Wolf's incarceration has led to a debate over what, exactly, a "journalist" is in the age of the Internet, and whether Wolf could credibly claim to fit the definition. Wolf's blog used to include a line on its homepage in which he described himself as many things -- "an artist, an activist, an anarchist and an archivist" -- but not a reporter or journalist. In February, San Francisco Chronicle columnist Debra Saunders called Wolf "a blogger with an agenda and a camera" and said she did not understand "why newspapers ... refer to him as the 'longest-imprisoned journalist' in America."

Salon spoke with Wolf about his time in prison, his decision not to comply with the subpoena and how he defines "journalist."

What has this whole experience been like for you?

Overwhelming. It's broken down a lot of ideas that I thought were true, and were revealed to be false. It's also reinforced suspicions I had that turned out to be true.

What do you mean by that?

I mean, well, many of those thoughts and suspicions revolve around the federal justice system and whether people are [really guaranteed] fair trials -- which they're not. Even when you have money and spend $100,000, in the federal system an attorney's nothing more than a deal-broker.

And in terms of stuff that transpired that was surprising to me, and shouldn't have been -- when you think of felons, you think of them as all being these rough-and-tough and unkind people. In reality, they're just people that were put in a desperate situation and acted out in a desperate manner to achieve the means that they felt were necessary at that point in time.

What was prison like?

It was very boring. Lots of time spent reading. I read about 50 books. I wrote about 1,000 letters responding to the people who were writing me. And then I spent the rest of the time eating, playing some trivial game like dominoes or Spades, and talking to the prisoners about how they got there and what their thoughts on the American landscape are.

So it wasn't quite "Oz."

No, in fact, in some of the early interviews [I did] I said my only perspective was watching "Oz," and as I came in there I was completely afraid of what I was going to experience, and it was much more like -- the best way I can describe it is, and I never went to a military boarding school, but it's what I picture a military boarding school would be like during summer vacation or Easter break for the kids that don't go home or something.

Why did you decide to resist the subpoena?

Well, for two reasons. One, I feel that it's important for journalists to assert the rights and privileges that we are afforded under the U.S. Constitution. We already lost some, and this is the only way we'll ever gain them back. And so just on the issue of the rights it was worth resisting.

But then on the other side, it's also crucial that journalists act as the fourth estate and not [work] for the state in pursuing investigations for ... prosecutions. If you're an investigator for the government then you should be getting a paycheck from the government.

Why did you decide to release the video?

That decision had not quite been made, but we had stepped foot down that road in November and inquired whether the U.S. attorney would accept this resolution to the whole thing. We put this forward in November when the en banc wasn't going to be successful, the Circuit second-level appeal. And the U.S. attorney said the only thing he'd ever accept would be full compliance with the demands of the subpoena, which would have involved testifying before the secret grand jury.

And so what happened really wasn't so much that I decided to release the tape as the government decided to go along with our proposal we put forward back then. And the reason that I had come to that decision about releasing the tape is that, while I feel that I should have autonomy to decide what I publish and don't publish, at the end of the day there wasn't anything of a sensitive nature on the unpublished material and as it had become newsworthy in and of itself, once I had exhausted all reasonable appeals there was no reason to deny the public's demand for the material.

Next page: "Once you've lost the legal fight, then you're just a martyr for the sake of being a martyr"