Activist-journalist Josh Wolf was jailed on Aug. 1 after refusing to turn over video he shot of a G8 protest in San Francisco. He was released Tuesday, making him the longest-incarcerated journalist in U.S. history. He spoke to Democracy Now!
An excerpt from the April 4 interview:
AMY GOODMAN: How does it feel to be free?
JOSH WOLF: It feels great and a bit overwhelming. It's been sort of nonstop stimulus after spending over six months in a world where everything is the same, day in and day out, and there's no real stimulus to speak of. So it's a bit overwhelming, like coming to Manhattan for the first time, or something like that.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain the deal you made with prosecutors.
JOSH WOLF: Well, basically, we came to an agreement that had been on the table since November, which is that while the video -- while my unpublished video material should be protected, once I had been unsuccessful in all the appeals for the legal battle, there was no real point in maintaining control of material that had no -- really no news value, no evidentiary value and was basically just my outtakes for editing purposes. There was nothing edited for content. It was all done for pacing and that sort of thing. So there was no real reason not to publish it, other than the fact that the government had subpoenaed it. So once we had lost those appeals, we inquired with the US attorney as to whether or not there would be some possible thing where we could give up the footage and I could walk out. And they US attorney was like, “No, we need the full cooperation of the subpoena, all demands.” And so, I sat here until the judge ordered into mediation, actually, I believe, the day after I last appeared on your show.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And then, in terms of the actual agreement, what happened to the video then?
JOSH WOLF: The video was first published on my website, and then, sometime after that, we filed a motion for my release along with a declaration, and the declaration contained a DVD with the same material that was posted on the website.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, just to explain, Josh, I believe when we first talked, you said that you were not, you know, gathering this videotape for the state, you were not going to hand it over to them, although you were sorry ultimately, you said, that you hadn't just published the whole thing on your website to begin with. So why did you change your mind?
JOSH WOLF: Well, I think I was pretty -- I tried to be very careful in my interviews and said I will not submit to the demands of the subpoena, I will not testify. I may have inadvertently said I will not turn it over, and I had wanted to just simply publish it and tell them to download it, but for some reason in the law you can't just file an affidavit that says you can download the video at this website. And so, that was the compromise I didn't particularly want to make, in that I was physically turning it over, but that's a principle issue. And in reality, if they get it on a disk or they get it on a website, it really is only principle that are at stake there.
AMY GOODMAN: And you agreed -- the prosecutors agreed, not only you wouldn't have to testify, you wouldn't have to identify people on this videotape.
JOSH WOLF: Well, the prosecutors simply agreed that I could submit a declaration providing the answers to two of their concerns, which they laid before me prior to me making any statements about those concerns.
AMY GOODMAN: And what were those two questions?
JOSH WOLF: They're covered in the declaration itself. One is “Can I identify the person who Officer Shields was chasing?” which I have no idea who that was. And the second question was, “Did I witness the incident of the alleged attempted arson on the police car, the ‘throwing the firecracker’ or something of that nature?”
AMY GOODMAN: And what did you respond to that?
JOSH WOLF: That, again, I was filming his -- Officer Shields’s partner during the time that that allegedly occurred, so it would have been impossible for me to see that happen, and my unpublished material demonstrates that.