Blogger Covering Anarchist Rally Goes Free. Josh Wolf was a young video blogger who covered an anarchist protest in San Francisco. (On NPR I heard some of the footage–kids chanting “Smash the state! Smash the state!”) Apparently a police officer was injured and a cruiser burned. Since the cruiser was purchased with government money, the gov’t claimed it was a federal crime, and thus Wolf enjoyed no protections as a journalist. He refused to give up his out-takes (which the gov’t claimed may have had incriminating evidence) and finally struck a deal to end his 7 1/2 month prison stay. For what it’s worth, he sounded fairly articulate and reasonable in the short clips I heard.
In any event, it’s pretty ridiculous that someone can go to jail for not handing over videotapes that (everyone now stipulates) contain nothing incriminating. [Mises Economics Blog]
This was never about incriminating tapes, or even about the tapes at all. Josh Wolf was in jail because he defied his lords and masters, and that’s it. If he’d knelt down before the jackbooted would-be gods and offered his unconditional obedience, he’d have been on his way without further incident.
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