And that includes responding to a subpoena and tuning over material when directed to do so by a court.

He is being cast by some journalists as a young champion of the First Amendment, jailed for taking a lonely stand against heavy-handed federal prosecutors.

Josh Wolf, a 24-year-old blogger, has spent more than six months behind bars in California -- the longest contempt-of-court term ever served by someone in the media -- for refusing to turn over a videotape he shot of a violent San Francisco demonstration against a Group of Eight summit meeting. Unless a mediation session today can break the impasse, he will likely remain imprisoned at least until the current grand jury's term expires in July.

"Even in high school, he was standing up for things that weren't considered popular," says his mother, Liz Wolf-Spada.

But Wolf's rationale for withholding the video, and refusing to testify, is less than crystal clear. There are no confidential sources involved in the case. He sold part of the tape to local television stations and posted another portion on his blog. Why, then, is he willing to give up his freedom over the remaining footage?

"It's one thing to say journalists must respect promises of confidentiality they made to their sources," says Eugene Volokh, a law professor at the University of California at Los Angeles. "It would be quite another to say journalists have a right to refuse to testify even about non-confidential sources. When something is videotaped in a public place, it's hard to see even an implied agreement of confidentiality."

In an interview with PBS's "Frontline," Wolf says: "There was a trust established between people involved in the organization that I was covering and myself . . . that what I chose to release was what I chose to release, and that I wasn't an investigator for the state."

This is rather cut and dried for me. When a citizen -- regardless of profession -- has evidence of a crime and is ordered to turn it over by a court, he or she has to comply. "I'm a journalist/reporter/blogger" is not a magic shield to exempt one from the basic citizenship obligations we all have. period.

Posted by: Greg at 11:08 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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