Imprisoned journalist will be stuck behind bars until June, court rules

In fact, court filings show that the police’s real interest is finding out who attacked and seriously hurt an SFPD officer in the course of the protest—a valid concern and one that SF District Attorney Kamala Harris’ office should be handling. Instead, the feds were called in, triggering justifiable fears in Josh Wolf, who the FBI has questioned about his anarchist tendencies, that the real reason that he’s sitting in jail, is that the feds want him to release his video outtakes and identify the anarchists, who lifted up their ski masks and spoke directly into Josh’s camera, before the violence went down. And then there’s the fact that the portion of Wolf’s tape that he posted online at his blog and got picked up by several TV stations does not paint a flattering portrait of the police.
Interestingly, while Wolf has argued that journalists should not be forced into becoming investigative tools of the government, both the SFPD and the US Attorney General’s Office have voiced doubts to the Guardian as to whether Wolf is a “real” journalist, citing his direct involvement with the anarchist cause as well as the fact that he is not employed by a media outlet. These arguments should sound the alarm bells of freelancers nationwide.