Thursday, August 17, 2006
CFAC NEWS
CFAC joins amicus brief backing documentary journalist jailed for refusing to turn over out-takes to federal prosecutors
CFAC, together with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the Society of Professional Journalists and the WIW Freedom to Write Fund, has filed an amicus brief in the case of independent documentary film maker and self-styled anarchist, Josh Wolf. Here’s a PDF of the brief.
Wolf is in jail for having refused to honor a federal district court subpoena for the out-takes from his filming of a San Francisco street demonstration that turned violent. Federal prosecutors want the unpublished videotapes to find out who set fire to a San Francisco police vehicle. Wolf says he is a journalist who, under the First Amendment, may not be forced to function as an investigator for the police.
CFAC supports Wolf not because we agree with his politics, but because we stand beside all bona fide journalists from whom government seeks to compel disclosure of confidential sources or confidential information gathered in the course of reporting. Society is the poorer when news sources lose confidence in reporters’ ability, within the law, to protect their identities and confidential information.
CFAC’s amicus brief in the federal Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, while endorsing Wolf’s First Amendment defense, focuses on a different legal theory--viz., that the federal Rules of Evidence should be construed to provide protection of reporter’s sources and unpublished materials comparable to the protection provided in the Shield Laws of most states.
The amicus brief is written by Tedd Boutrous and other lawyers at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher in LA. Gibson Dunn represented Time Inc. and Time Magazine reporter Matt Cooper in their appeal last year to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the same legal theory was advanced. The Court, of course, declined to hear the case.
Here is CFAC’s notice of joinder of the amicus brief supporting Wolf.
--Peter Scheer
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