Freedomedia

For More LIVE Video visit Olympic Torch SF

Olympic Torch SF is an innovative experiment in creating an interactive news venue online and can be found at http://olympictorchsf.com. This year, the Olympic games will be held in China; the only North American stop on the Olympic torch relay will take place in San Francisco on April 9. The games have generated controversy surrounding China’s human rights record, and protests have already ignited along the torch’s journey to Beijing.

We are dedicated to reporting on the events and controversies leading up to and beyond the SF relay. The site will feature live video streams from the run, the protests and will also feature photos and text updates from the community. Additionally, on April 9, at 1:30pm, a special live one-hour presentation of D7TV’s internet news program, Story Today(www.storytoday.com), will feature background stories, streaming footage from the streets, along with Skype call-ins from the route and from those at home.

On Wednesday, Olympic Torch SF will be operating at least 2 live feeds from Noon on, and a very special episode of Story Today will premiere at 1:30PM.

For ongoing text-based coverage, please follow the SFTorch twitter account. You can subscribe to SMS updates by sending a text message to 40404 with the message “follow sftorch.” Alternatively, you can also follow the SFTorch feed by visiting http://twitter.com/sftorch – If you have any updates on the Olympic Torch or the related protests please feel free to send us the information by typing “@sftorch ” followed by your message using either SMS or the twitter web interface.

         

Please write your congressperson. There is movement to get the subpoenas for the two Chronicle reporters rescinded.(http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/01/19/MNGKTNLHOR1.DTL)
We need to let everyone know that Josh is not just awaiting incarceration, but HAS ALREADY BEEN IN JAIL FOR OVER 150 DAYS FOR GRAND JURY CONTEMPT. To make an exception for Williams and Fainaru-Wada while keeping Josh jailed is an assault against all independent media.

Here is a sample letter:

January 19, 2006

To Representative John Conyers

From Liz Wolf-Spada
PO Box 2235
Wrightwood, CA 92397
liz_wolf_spada@yahoo.com
760-964-6101

Dear Representative Conyers,

While I find it commendable that Congress is finally getting involved in the questionable legality of grand jury subpoenas of journalists, I am appalled that no mention has been made of my son’s case. Josh Wolf is not facing a subpoena. HE HAD BEEN INCARCERATED FOR 150 DAYS ALREADY FOR REFUSING TO COMPLY WITH THAT SUBPOENA.
Josh Wolf is an independent journalist who reports on local San Francisco activities, with a special interest in protests and demonstrations. He has been reporting on these events on his web site for over three years and has a large following. One of his videotapes from a protest of June 8, 2002, is currently being used to prosecute cases of police brutality against jailed protestors.
Unlike the Chronicle reporters, Josh does not have a large corporate media conglomerate backing him or paying his bills. He was not given a stay, but was immediately put in jail on August 1, 2006, when Judge William Alsup ruled him in contempt for refusing to turn over unpublished video footage and for refusing to testify. Since then, Josh’s lawyer, Martin Garbus, has offered to give the unpublished material to the US Attorney in exchange for them dropping the subpoena to testify. The US Attorney refused this offer. The judge refused to view the tape to see if it had any relevance to the supposed investigation into an alleged attempt to burn a police car. The police car in question suffered only a broken taillight.
Josh cannot get permission from his sources to testify. His sources are the large group of dissidents in San Francisco who are exercising their first amendment rights to free speech and assembly. The attempt to intimidate Josh to name names of people present at that protest not only goes against our rights to a free press, but it goes against our rights to free speech and assembly.
I urge you to petition Attorney General Gonzales to dismiss this contempt charge against Josh Wolf and release him from prison, where he has been held in coercive custody for 150 days.
Sincerely,

Liz Wolf-Spada
(mother of jailed journalist, Josh Wolf)

         

In your October column, Ethics: We Need to Talk…, you implicitly suggested that I should be protected from having to testify and provide my unpublished material, if and only if, I am a “professional journalist”. While I certainly understand your argument that a reporter’s privilege “must be very narrowly applied or the justice system would collapse”, I cannot help but feel the criterion you’ve proposed is inherently flawed.

At best, the suggestion of narrowly defining who qualifies as a protected journalist will result in an elite class of professionals who work for mainstream media outlets, while reporters for the alternative
press would be given no choice, but to practice their craft without a net. More likely, I anticipate that this approach would establish a state-sanctioned journalist license, and anyone would be subject to
having her license revoked should she stray from the party line. At worst, independent voices could be subject to prosecution for practicing journalism without a license.

The First Amendment was not written to protect the Hearst Corporation and its thousands of employees, although it certainly should. When the founding fathers set out to guarantee a free press they really did seek to protect independent journalists and pamphleteers, such as Thomas Paine and his “Common Sense”.

The problem with only protecting “professionals”, while denying these protections to those who do not rely on their reportage to support themselves financially is two-fold. For one, students of journalism must be protected-if they are not, they will be denied the opportunity to engage in serious news gathering during their education and thus
unprepared to enter the field as professionals. Secondly, if independents are denied these protections, then who will report on mainstream journalists who abuse their professional standing?

What about the stories that are ignored or neglected by the mainstream media? Are those issues really not worthy of coverage simply because the established media has deemed them unfit for airtime? If it is
important that these stories are covered, then isn’t it also important that journalists investigating these stories be protected?

Who should be protected? As Jeff Jarvis mused previously, “Tony Soprano shouldn’t be able to insulate himself by simply creating a blog”, but I do feel that the mommy-blogger who happens to break a
story about a dishonest baby-food company should not be forced to out her confidential sources. In my opinion, anyone’s journalist activities should be protected whether or not he is paid for his work. After all, a journalist is supposedly a public servant and if he or she is working due to his or her own conscience and without financial compensation, how can this possibly invalidate him or her as a public servant?

But would this broad application to the journalist shield lead the justice system to collapse? I doubt it, but there is a more sensible approach to limiting these protections without establishing an exclusive class of protected journalists. By applying a balancing test between the need for law enforcement to obtain this information against the damage that would be inflicted to the rights of a free press, many of these cases can be resolved without the establishment of a state sanctioned press.

For example, in my case the federal government has asserted that a protester threw a firework in the vicinity of a police car four days after the Fourth of July. The US Attorney has argued that this was an
attempt to burn the San Francisco police vehicle and should therefore be a federal investigation, but according to the police report, the car did not burn. Despite the fact that I’ve stated for the record that
I neither filmed nor witnessed the alleged incident and despite the fact that we’ve offered to screen the complete footage for the judge, I am currently sitting in a federal prison cell for protecting my sources and
unpublished material.

If I were to submit to the government demands, then it would no longer be possible for sources to trust me with privileged information; I would be denied the unfettered access that I’ve been granted as a result
of establishing a trusted relationship with Bay Area activists, and I would thus be unable to fully report on civil dissent in the San Francisco region. Forcing me to comply with this subpoena would and has created
a chilling effect, which should be balanced against the federal government’s need to investigate the alleged crime that may have occurred and which resulted, if it even happened, in no significant
damage to the police vehicle that suffered a broken taillight.

         

File No: (Pending)
Resolution No: (Pending)
Presented to SF BOS on July 18,2006

Resolution resisting the federal government’s intervention in the City and County of San Francisco’s investigation of the July 8th, 2005 G-8 protest and expressing support for the California Shield Law

WHEREAS, The City and County of San Francisco and its residents are governed under the California State Constitution and other state laws; and

WHEREAS, The California Constitution under the California Evidence Code 1070 establishes protections for news-gatherers under the California Shield Law; and

WHEREAS, The California Court of Appeals recently ruled that the California Shield Law “is intended to protect the gathering and dissemination of news,” and that the law protects Internet “bloggers” and other new forms of journalism just as it does traditional journalists; and,

WHEREAS, A federal grand jury is investigating the events that occurred at a July 8th, 2005 protest of the G-8 Summit in Scotland, and the stated subject of the investigation is the alleged vandalism of a San Francisco Police Department patrol vehicle; and

WHEREAS, The United States Government asserts that this case is under federal jurisdiction because the patrol vehicle is paid for out of San Francisco’s general fund, and the City and County receive money from the federal government; and

WHEREAS, This attempt to circumvent the local judicial system stands to damage the efficacy of the California Shield Law and the California State Constitution; and

WHEREAS, There is an ongoing local investigation in the matters of the July 8th demonstration; and

WHEREAS, Josh Wolf, an independent journalist in the City and County of San Francisco, and therein protected by the California Shield Law, has been subpoenaed to testify before the Federal Grand Jury and to furnish his unedited footage for the jury; and

WHEREAS, Josh Wolf was reporting on protected First Amendment activities on the night of July 8th, 2005; and

WHEREAS, The US Government has a recent and extensive history of overstepping its limitations in its efforts to investigate political protest; now, therefore be it

RESOLVED, That the Board of Supervisors of the City and County of San Francisco oppose these attempts by the federal government and the federal grand jury to intervene in this matter that is within the jurisdiction of the City and County of San Francisco; and, be it further

RESOLVED, The Board of Supervisors urges the federal government and the federal grand jury to respect the protection of journalists afforded under the California Shield Law; and, be it further

RESOLVED, The City and County of San Francisco reinforces the need for a free press as stipulated in the First Amendment of the US Constitution and is deeply concerned that this attempt to erode the protections afforded to journalists under state law can not only have a chilling effect, but stands to potentially erode the trust relationship between journalists and their contacts and is essential to journalistic practices.

         

For Immediate Release July 13, 2006

National Lawyers Guild Condemns Attack on Free Press

San Francisco video journalist Josh Wolf is being charged with civil contempt for exercising his first amendment right and refusing to provide a federal grand jury with video footage he shot at a protest last summer. The Guild believes that the grand jury is being improperly used to obtain materials which would normally be protected under California’s Reporter Shield Law. The civil contempt hearing is scheduled for July 20th at 1 p.m. before Judge William Alsup and the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) will host a press conference at noon in front of the Federal Building-450 Golden Gate in San Francisco on that day. (more…)

         

In February of this year I was served with a subpoena to appear in front of a federal grand jury regarding a protest that I shot in the city of San Francisco on July 8th of 2005. I’ve since exhausted all possible means to quash that subpoena and was served a final subpoena on Monday afternoon [June 12th] ordering me to appear this Thursday, June 15th. I have been compiling all associated documents related to this case at the grand jury resource page.

The case is somewhat complicated, but essentially, I have been ordered to turn over the unpublished video footage of the protest and to submit to examination by the federal grand jury; I feel that this is an attempt to trump the protections afforded to me by the State of California under the state shield law. The assistant US Attorney has asserted that the federal government has jurisdiction in the case because of the vandalism of an SFPD patrol vehicle. The US argues that as the city of San Francisco receives money from the federal government, a portion of the vehicle is, in essence, federal property and thus a federal crime may have occurred. Not only does this logic seem silly, but if unchallenged, will have a deleterious effect on the state protections afforded to many journalists both independent and those that are part of the established media. Just as the police vehicle has some vague monetary connection to the interests of the federal government, so to does any public space including the public roads and sidewalks. In fact, it is my opinion that if this interpretation stands, it has the potential to eviscerate all state protections afforded to journalists and could conceivably have such a dramatic chilling effect on both journalists and their subjects as to effectively kill politically contentious journalism in America. Sure, that’s probably a bit dramatic, but from my perspective this is pretty serious, and I’m curious as to whether there is anyone you know who might be willing to shed light on this story.

It goes against my journalistic ethics to provide the footage to the government, and I have every reason to believe that if I were to comply at that level, I would then be asked to identify various activists that I may or may not know on my video and it goes against every moral fiber in my body to sit back and out people for their political beliefs; I have a decent sense of history and I remember that it was not that long ago that Senator Mc Carthy was holding HUAC meetings and inquiring from scores of people who they knew that might be Communist, and it is for this reason that I need to have all of the information pursuant to my case available to me and have had ample opportunity to discuss and assess all options available with my legal counsel before making any decisions in regards to how I will proceed.

         

Talk Back, the flagship program for the TV station I work at,peralta.TV, is currently working on a special edition of the program focusing on the Day Without Immigrants protests that occured on May 1st. Some of my footage is being used in the production.

Paul Gordon, the editor for the show recently compiled this teaser video for our website, it looks like it’ll be a great show. I’m looking forward to seeing the full thing; here’s Paul’s blurb about the clip from the Talk Back vlog.

Download File

The talk back crew covers the Day without Immigrants event, hitting Berkeley Oakland and San Francisco to bring you an event that speaks to the heart of of current imigration issues in this special edition episode of Talk Back.

The full-episode airs Friday at 7:30PM tune in live in the East Bay or on the internet at peralta.TV.

Ryan Blitstein’s article about me was just published on SF Weekly’s website.

To Wolf, the government subpoena of his tape represents a threat to his ability to gather news as an independent reporter. He believes it’s yet another reel cast in a Justice Department fishing expedition that will stop at nothing to put his activist compatriots behind bars.

All & all, I think Ryan did a pretty good job with the article, as can be expected there are a few things I’d disagree with and the legal help line for the NLG is 285-1011 (not 205-1011), but all in all pretty good.

I would like to point out one inaccurate fact which I think is very important to note, Ryan writes: “When he realized his July protest video was worth something, he sold an edited version to local TV stations.”

I did not sell my footage when I realized my footage was worth something. I sold my footage whn I realized it was being used without my permission. It is true that I sold the rights to Brian Shields beforehand, but I did not do so after finding out there was a “market” for the footage.

         

Last year recruiters from the Air Force OTC and the Army Corps of Engineers decided to attend a career fair held on the campus of San Francisco State. Dozens of students turned out to protest the recruiters presence on campus and I had the chance to film the protest which resulted in the school filing disciplinary action against numerous student groups and individual organizers.

Yesterday, the Marines showed up to the career fair, and faced with threats of disciplinary action, the students at SAW came up with an interesting approach to protest the recruiters and ensure that no students would join at the fair.

During the entire duration of the career fair from 11AM-3PM, student activists waited in line to speak with the recruiters. Most students chose to focus their discussions with the recruiters around military policy which discriminates against gays and lesbians and conflicts directly with the school’s anti-discrimination policies. Other students focused on the alarming incidence of sexual assault amongst females in the military and still others focused on the death toll in Iraq and attempted to remind the recruiters of the potential consequences of their actions.

Police presence at the career fair was especially heavy, with over a half-dozen officers monitoring the student activists. While the conversations with the recruiters did focus on sensitive issues, both the students and Marines acted in a polite and restrained manner and the cops did not intervene at any point.

Although a few students appeared to actually be interested in signing up for Marines, they were forced to wait in a very long line to talk to the recruiters and were exposed to the issues SAW sought to address while they waited.

In what seems like the administrations ongoing attempts to curtail free speech, students entering the career fair were not only required to show their student identification, they were also required to surrender their ID during their visit to the career fair. When asked about this unconventional policy, a worker at the fair told me it was for “security.” After a follow-up question, she told me that there were protestors at the fair and the school needed to know exactly who was at the fair. Not only is this policy intimidating and contributes to a lack of privacy, but also threatens to create a chilling effect on free speech and should not continue.

I shot some video footage with my digital camera, but the sound is terrible. I might edit something together over the weekend, then again, I might not…

TAGS: SFSU, collegenotcombat, sanfrancisco, SF, counterrecruitment, protest

         

Fuck the Corporate Media
Originally uploaded by Insurgent.

On July 8th, I filmed a protest in San Francisco. During the demonstration, an officer was injured.

Obviously the injury of the police officer sparked a media sandstorm; however, the newsmedia had elected not to cover the protest so they had no footage of the event.

Brian Shields of The Bay Area is Talking was compiling all the photos and reports as they came in from the protest and I contacted him about my footage shortly before posting it to Indybay and my vlog.

In an attempt to steer KRON’s story towards a more balanced outlook of the event, I elected to sell a selected portion of my footage documenting the police’s oppresive actions to the station.

Now that KRON had the footage, what would the rest of the stations do as the story became a major ratings grab? They did what everyone else did, they went to Indybay and watched my video of the events, only they also decided to put excerpts from my video on television without asking my permission, providing any sort of attribution or offering compensation.

Upon hearing this, I spoke to a few friends and one of them suggested that I simply send them a bill. So that’s what I did, I wrote a letter to each of the stations announcing my frustration with them using my footage and demanding fulfillment of my invoice for a sum significantly higher than the going stringer rate.

It worked, and almost all of them agreed to honor my invoice in exchange for the full quality footage already available on my website. I agreed, and have already recieved payment from most of the stations.

But that’s all backstory… well, tonight, CBS 5 aired a story about a report released by the police chief in regards to July 8th, and my footage was used quite liberally.

Due to the ongoing criminal investigation, I can’t really comment on the events of the night (yikes, I sound like Scott McClellan), I have an appointment with my lawyer tomorrow morning, and I’ll be sure to share what I can as soon as I discuss the matter with him.

But suffice it to say that the news report on CBS 5 was not accurate and neglected some very important elements of the story which are quite clear after watching this video which the CBS story relied on heavily. Judge for yourself, and please let me know what you think.

I’ll try to deliver a more direct response to the CBS story once, I speak with my legal counsel.