First Amendment martyr?

Didn't you say at one point that you wouldn't give up the tape?

I believe I said I wouldn't comply with the demands of the subpoena.

And by not comply with the demands of the subpoena, you meant what?

The demand was to testify in front of the grand jury and turn over the tape.

One of the things, though, that a lot of your defenders were talking about was the principle that journalists shouldn't have to give up unpublished material.

They shouldn't.

So how does that play into your decision to release the tape?

Well, there are certain fights that are worth getting into and then when you lose the fight walking away. In a situation where you have material with -- I don't want to say nothing on it, but nothing of an evidentiary value on it -- once you've lost the legal fight, then you're just a martyr for the sake of being a martyr. At that point the fight was for the testimony and not for this video with no real value whatsoever.

Why separate the testimony from the tape? Was there not a principle involved in the tape at that point?

Well, see, the principle is not acting as an investigator. In not putting up a fight to turn over the tape, I'm acting as an investigator, but at the end of the day, once that fight has been lost, there is no material evidence to speak of on the unpublished tape as opposed to the published tape.

What does the content of the tape have to do with the principle?

The content of the tape has nothing to do with the principle. The principle is not turning over broad information to the government to aid in their investigation. It doesn't much matter what that content was, it's not the role of a journalist to be providing evidence whenever the government asks for it.

So why was taking the stand and giving testimony to the grand jury the sticking point for you?

Several reasons. As the grand jury is a secret body, the U.S. attorney was not candid about what questions [were going] to be asked. The only clue we had was an article in the San Francisco Chronicle where Luke Macaulay, who is the spokesperson for the U.S. attorney's office, stated they were seeking my testimony to identify potential witnesses. Not potential suspects, mind you, but potential witnesses [to the arson and beating]. So I had every reason to think that when you take that statement and try to derive what that would mean, I would be put in front of the grand jury, the video would play and every time a new person would enter the frame, I'd be asked whether or not I could identify him or her. Then anyone that I was able to identify would likely go through the same situation, and you would essentially create a witch hunt akin to McCarthyism in the 1950s.

Was there any other journalistic principle involved in refusing to testify?

OK, besides acting as a prosecutor, besides asserting the rights, was there any other journalistic principle?

I'm not questioning your justification, I'm just wondering whether there was an established First Amendment argument or anything like that.

Well, the established First Amendment argument dates back from the Branzburg v. Hayes case ... One of the key issues is that because [a grand jury is] secretive, there's a trust that's going to be lost, because no one's going to be able to verify what was or wasn't said. Secondly, just by acting to aid in the prosecution, it's going to have a deleterious effect on the trust relationship between journalists and their contacts. And then finally, the other argument that I can just recall around the First Amendment issue is that if you have a free press that feels that they're going to be subject either to going against their ethics or going to jail, then the news will stop being news and just become P.R. -- what people want to get out, and not the stuff people fight to keep hidden.

There has been a lot of debate over whether you are a journalist. How would you define yourself?

I define myself as a journalist and a video blogger.

What do you feel makes you a journalist?

The question of who is a journalist is less important than what is journalism. I went out to engage in journalism, to document and cover a demonstration that would have been neglected by the mainstream press, for the purposes of documenting and showing the public what occurred. I feel that that is journalistic activity. And as I do this on a regular basis, I feel that I am a journalist.

How often did you do that sort of thing before the riot?

Well, that sort of thing is a broad thing -- not everything I do is of a political protest, some things I do are writing, some things are of a more fluff, sort of human interest bent. But I'd say that I had a new post on my blog at least once a week, and a new video at least once a month.

Is a blogger a journalist, in your mind? Are you a journalist because you had a blog?

A journalist can be a blogger, a blogger is not necessarily a journalist -- unless they, I mean, and that gets kind of fuzzy because if the sole focus on your blog is your pets, then I guess you are engaging in journalism about your pets, but it's a very, very fine-tuned scope.

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