Imprisoned vBlogger Josh Wolf captured on video

Josh Wolf, video camera in hand, responding to police orders to move back after incident in which a police officer was injured.

NEW EVIDENCE SUPPORTS CLAIM VIDEO ENTHUSIAST WAS ACTING AS JOURNALIST

Imprisoned vBlogger Josh Wolf captured on video

covering protest in July 2005

San Francisco CA – Bay Media Lab host Howard Vicini will present new video evidence during a Friday night broadcast on San Francisco cable access in the case against vBlogger Josh Wolf, who has been held in coercive confinement for more than 200 days, a new U.S. record for a journalist, for refusing to turn over raw video he shot of a San Francisco protest rally in 2005, that was subpoenaed by a federal grand jury.

The live broadcast titled, “Freedom of Expression, New Challenges, New Sacrifice,” will feature discussion among media activists and journalists concerning the Wolf case and others that have resulted in journalists facing federal subpoenas and the prospect of jail time if they refuse.

Guests include Executive Director of Oakland-based Media Alliance, Jeff Perlstein; reporter & radio producer, Sarah Olson; Journalism Chair of the Bay Area Chapter of the National Writers Union, Richard Knee ; journalist & commercial media producer, Ralph Miller; reporter for the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Sarah Phelan; Josh Wolf's father, Len Harrison; and members of the Free Josh Wolf Coalition, Andy Blue, Julian Davis, Amy De Reyes, and Njeri Sims.

The newly-released video, previously only seen on the Internet, was shot by another vBlogger during the same 2005 protest and captures Wolf shooting his video in a manner, Vicini claims, consistent with Wolf's assertion that he was there as journalist covering the event, even responding at several points to police orders, clearly heard on the video, to move back.

This is significant according to Vicini because of statements, made in federal court by a federal prosecutor and the presiding judge in Wolf case, William Alsup, that called into question Wolf's status as a journalist.

Vicini will also present a prerecorded interview with the individual who shot the video in which she asserts that she and her partner were contacted at home by FBI agents twice before agents seemed to lose interest after the subpoena was served on Wolf. This, too, supports a claim by Wolf's lawyer, First Amendment advocate Martin Garbus who says the government isn't really after information about the alleged crimes committed at the demonstration.

According to Garbus, "This was the use of an FBI anti-terror law to get information on people they can't get information about, such as anarchists. They know he (Wolf) knows nothing about the actions involving the police car."

Quoted in the Annenberg USC Online Journalism Review, Garbus says what federal officials really want is to know is who the demonstrators are. He calls the prosecutors' actions, an "abuse of the grand jury," and an "expansion of the anti-terrorism investigation to other dissidents."

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