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Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
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Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Feb. 28, 2007 / 10 Adar, 5767

Josh Wolf — Blogger — Has No Press Pass

By Debra J. Saunders

Debra J. Saunders
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Josh Wolf, the blogger who has spent some six months in prison for refusing to hand over a video he took of a violent July 8, 2005, protest in the Mission District of San Francisco to a federal grand jury, is not a journalist.


He is a blogger with an agenda and a camera, who sold a "selected portion" of the video of the demonstration, which left a San Francisco police officer with a fractured skull, to KRON-TV. The day after the melee, Wolf called himself on his videoblog an "artist, an activist, an anarchist and an archivist." He does not work for a news organization. He does not answer to editors who fact-check. I do not understand why newspapers — including The San Francisco Chronicle — refer to him as the "longest-imprisoned journalist" in America.


San Francisco Assemblyman Mark Leno, who has spoken at Wolf fundraisers, told me, "I think he, and those who are doing similar kind of work, is in the process of redefining what a journalist is relative to 21st century technology." In this brave new world, no definition is sacred any more. But a camera and a Website do not a journalist make, any more than shooting a criminal makes a vigilante a cop.


Wolf likes to put himself in the company of real journalists, such as The Chronicle's Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada, who risked going to jail in order to protect their confidential source in the BALCO story. But unlike Fainaru-Wada and Williams, Wolf had no confidential source agreement. He was filming public protests — those protesters had no expectation of privacy.


Because he can't hide behind a confidential source agreement, Wolf has had to get creative. So, in a friend-of-the-court brief, the ACLU warned that if Wolf is viewed by anarchists and antiwar groups "as cooperating with the government, he will no longer be able to perform his vital role of covering these groups."


Wolf's actions, however, make a mockery of the ACLU argument. Wolf offered to show the outtakes of his video to a federal judge, just to prove that the video does not depict the police attacks in question. The judge refused.


I do not support the feds' action of putting Wolf in prison for some six months while they seem to be fishing for evidence. As Leno noted, "I think it's important for people to realize that this man has been held in federal prison, he has never been charged with a crime and never been convicted of a crime, and they are treating him like a very dangerous criminal."


Readers, therefore, should ask whether jailing Wolf for months is worth the cost to the taxpayers. He attacked no one. It is not even clear that his video implicates anyone — or that investigators could not use some other footage to find out who attacked two city cops and damaged their patrol car. Then there's the question as to whether the U.S. attorney even has jurisdiction here, even if the SFPD does receive federal funds.


Peter Shields, the San Francisco cop who was out of work for a year after his skull was fractured in the incident, has little problem with Wolf's incarceration. Shields also is none too happy that the San Francisco supervisors "immediately" mobilized to show support for Wolf's cause. "Why couldn't they do that to find who hit me?" Shields asked over coffee Monday morning.


Shields took Spanish classes so that he could better serve the diverse Mission District where he is stationed. He was furious to see the activists, who say they support the poor, trashing a vibrant, diverse working-class neighborhood during the protest. When he arrived on the scene, he said, "they were destroying property. They were endangering lives."


What if he were attacked not because he is a cop, but because he is a gay man? Shields, who is gay, said people here would be "furious." He added, "If this chaos happened in the Castro, there would not be this hoopla, if you will, around the Josh Wolf videotape." But there is no public outrage, he added, "just because I put on a uniform."


Alas, in the Special City, attacking a gay man is a hate crime, while attacking a gay cop can be a cause celebre.

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© 2007, Creators Syndicate

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