Amy Goodman interviewed Josh Wolf on Democracy Now! yesterday, where he explained his long-standing resistance to providing footage of a protest to a federal grand jury.

There was an altercation at the protest when a police car drove into a crowd of protesters and was allegedly burned. The case was prosecuted by federal authorities, on the pretext that since the SFPD receives some federal antiterrorism funds the incident is a federal matter.

What really explains the federal status of the case, according to Josh:

AMY GOODMAN: The protests that you were covering, what do you think the government is trying to find out about the protesters?

JOSH WOLF: I think that their intent is two-fold, or even more than that. One thing that they're trying to do is they're trying to basically move toward state-sanctioned journalism. They're trying to say that I’m not a journalist, and even if I was, that journalists aren't protected, in order to basically force journalists to act as agents for the state. Beyond that, they're also trying to identify civil dissidents and form databases. The ACLU has uncovered numerous instances of the government trying to capture identities of people who are protesting against the government. Dissent may be patriotic, but this current administration doesn't think so, and they're doing everything to criminalize it, or at least intimidate those that are engaged in it to the point that they feel that it is not safe to continue expressing their beliefs.

AMY GOODMAN: You have used the term, Josh, “anarchist witch hunt” in your blog. What do you mean?

JOSH WOLF: Well, the grand jury itself is a very strange segment of the government, in that there's no attorneys, there's no judges. It's just the US Attorney and the grand jury, and it's my belief that what they want to do is they want to call me, have me identify the people in the video. Then any people that I’m able to identify would in turn be called in. Those people would then be forced to either go to jail for contempt or name the people in the video that they saw. Then those people would follow the same procedure like so forth and like so forth until they had a database of everyone that was there that night. We've seen similar things happen in regards to the ELF, the Environmental Liberation Front, as well as the ALF, the Animal Liberation Front, in several Bay Area grand juries that have resulted in grand jury resisters and other people that have chosen not to resist and told what's going on.

Another fascinating issue the case raises is who is a journalist and whether those who work for corporate news organizations will receive greater support than independents.

AMY GOODMAN: Josh, in a January 29th court filing, federal prosecutors said that it's in your "imagination" that you're a journalist.

JOSH WOLF: I think it's a very scary idea that the US Attorney, the Justice Department, the government prosecution feels that they can determine who is and isn't a journalist. I think that's the first step towards state-sanctioned journalism, and I think it also is indicative of a world almost a 1984 Orwellian world that I don't think we want to live in. As far as whether or not I’m a journalist in my imagination, the New York Times has said I’m a journalist. The Society of Professional Journalists has awarded me an award as a journalist. Countless media outlets have said I’m a journalist. So if it's my imagination and other journalists' imagination, then who decides what is and isn't a journalist? The government?

...

AMY GOODMAN: Two San Francisco Chronicle reporters ... also face imprisonment for not revealing sources in exposing the steroid Barry Bonds case ... but they have not gone to jail. What's the difference?

JOSH WOLF: The legal difference is not much. It clearly shows how the government's deciding to deal with corporate media versus an independent journalist, is that they've said, well, we're not going to make you go to jail until the Ninth District rules one way or the other, and then the Ninth District's hearings have been pushed back and pushed back and pushed back.

Mine, on the other hand -- I was escorted into custody from the courtroom the day I was ruled in contempt. The Ninth Circuit ruled, while I was in custody -- or actually the Ninth Circuit spent a month waiting to determine whether or not to grant me bail -- granted me bail, passed it on to the next panel. That panel ruled, and then immediately they said I needed to go back into custody while we still had another level of Ninth Circuit appeals pending. So it's definitely a divergence between how the government’s handled my situation as an independent journalist and how they've dealt with the corporate media, who has also been found in civil contempt.

More SVW coverage of Josh Wolf (via Google)