In all frankness this story should put a chill down people’s spines. No matter how you view student protests, a journalist should not face liability for covering a protest.
But that is exactly what has happened to Josh Wolf, a journalism student at UC Berkeley.
They reported, “A campus disciplinary panel has concluded that journalism student Josh Wolf should not have been inside Wheeler Hall on Nov. 20, 2009, during an 11-hour student occupation even though, the panel acknowledged, he was filming the protest as a journalist.”
Mr. Wolf was found guilty of violating three sections of the campus-wide student conduct code when he accompanied students who seized Wheeler Hall to protest tuition hikes.
The Chronicle spoke with Frank LoMonte who is the executive director of the Student Press Law Center in Virgina. He called the decision disappointing.
From a legal standpoint, he noted that “having a press pass doesn’t give you a license to trespass where other civilians can’t go. Having said that, we generally forgive minor trespassing because it’s important for us to get the story. So it’s an awfully fine technicality to punish someone for zealously doing his job.”
Even more ironic, his punishment is to “write an essay to help the administration establish a clear policy on the rights of student journalists.”
“I’m more than happy to do anything I can to remedy the situation for future journalists,” said Josh Wolf. “But it seems absurd to make it my punishment. (I’m) a consultant without pay under threat of not getting my diploma.”
Wrote the Chronicle, “For UC Berkeley and its students, Wolf’s guilty verdict also raises questions about First Amendment rights, whether punishing one journalist leads others to censor themselves – known as the chilling effect – and who is a journalist in the first place.”
What Mr. Wolf did was film the arrest of students.
“After the police broke through the door, everyone quickly ran into the classroom where I continued filming as students were arrested one by one,” Mr. Wolf testified. He was then arrested as well.
Mr. Wolf previously spent over seven and a half months in federal prison for failing to turn over “unedited footage of a violent demonstration in San Francisco involving federal property. He eventually posted the footage on his site, joshwolf.net.”
The Chronicle reported, “In that case, Wolf’s stance focused public attention on whether federal law should shield journalists from having to turn over unpublished material, as California law does. That debate continues in Congress.”
Does this case disturb anyone else? As we know, the handling of student protests during the 1960s was a flashpoint for polarizing dissent. Authorities have learned how to better manage protests, for the most part understanding that a minimal response is best unless there is a clear public safety concern, such as moving out onto a busy interstate.
The question comes when we see the overreaction to student protests such as throwing a journalist who is chronicling the event into prison. Do we really want journalists arrested for covering events? Where do the lines get drawn for such arrests?
To me, this has a chilling impact on how I might cover future events. The second they can arrest a reporter, simply doing his or her job, is the second they can decide what is news and what is not news. Actions like this limit the ability of journalists to report what is really happening. As they say, those who have nothing to hide, hide nothing.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
“To me this has a chilling impact on how I might cover future events.”
It shouldn’t, David. A reporter must have the courage of his/her convictions. If you back off a story because you might get arrested, then the authoritarians have won. Follow Wolf’s example.
[quote]From a legal standpoint, he noted that “having a press pass doesn’t give you a license to trespass where other civilians can’t go. Having said that, we generally forgive minor trespassing because it’s important for us to get the story. So it’s an awfully fine technicality to punish someone for zealously doing his job.”
Even more ironic, his punishment is to “write an essay to help the administration establish a clear policy on the rights of student journalists.”
“I’m more than happy to do anything I can to remedy the situation for future journalists,” said Josh Wolf. “But it seems absurd to make it my punishment. (I’m) a consultant without pay under threat of not getting my diploma.”
[/quote]
If having a press pass doesn’t give the reporter a license to trespass, then it is clear Wolf disobeyed the law. If Wolf doesn’t like the law, then he needs to work to change it. But if everyone broke the law just bc they don’t think a law is fair, we would have complete anarchy and no order to society.
Having said that, I find Wolf’s punishment highly amusing. He is essentially being asked to write an essay on how to change the law so it is fairer to journalists trying to cover a story. Which seems to show the University is perhaps conceding its regulations/the law is not fair on this point. So Wolf should do just that – write an essay on how the law needs to be changed so that a journalist can cover a story w/o being arrested for criminal trespass. But Wolf may find in trying to figure this issue out, it is not as easy a task as he thought it would be! Which very well may have been the University’s point. Don’t know. Let’s see what Wolf comes up with…
I do think it very unfortunate and a bit over the top that Wolf could possibly not receive his diploma for a transgression this minor. I would say to lose his diploma over a minor trespass of this nature would be “cruel and unusual” punishment…
David, like you’ve wrote many times on here, if you don’t like the law then change it. Until then, that’s the law.
[i]”David, like you’ve wrote many times on here, if you don’t like the law then change it. Until then, that’s the law.”[/i]
In most circumstances, I would probably agree with you on this, Rusty. However, having given this case a good 45 seconds of thought, I don’t. How else could Josh Wolf have covered this story if he had not been willing to trespass? It’s not as if he could have quickly run over to the legislature, lobbied to get a bill written and passed and then started to do his job.
The only real out in this for him is that his “punishment” is quite mild.
I think it makes sense to hold a journalist accountable if he breaks the law in cases where his breaking the law was not mandatory for him to cover the story or if, by trespassing or committing some other infraction, he put himself, or law enforcement officers or others in danger. But that does not seem to be the case here.
I don’t really think you need to change the law itself. I think the best solution is to use better judgment on a case-by-case basis. The panel needs to ask the obvious questions: Did this journalist create any harm or hardship by his actions? Could he have covered the story from a distance where he did not need to trespass? Did he encourage others to break the law?
In every respect (as far as I know the details) it appears that he should have been given a pass.
However, I don’t feel the same way about the protesters. If they trespass, they usually are hoping to get arrested, hoping to draw attention to their cause. They also, in some cases, are harming others, making it harder or impossible to conduct their business. Yet very often–as happened in the case at UCD where students were arrested for occupying Mrak Hall–charges are dropped when protesters commit trespass. Not prosecuting them and punishing them, upon conviction, ultimately causes the next group to try the same tactics.
My feeling is that legal protest is a First Amendment right. But if someone feels it is necessary to break the law to get his point across, he should have to pay the price (which for trespass in a public building ought to be a stiff fine).
[img]http://www.davisenterprise.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Protest126w.jpg[/img]
A few quick thoughts on this.
1. It doesn’t take an act of congress or more than a color printer to get a press pass. Who is the sanctioning body of press passes? If I run a blog I can make an official looking press pass. Actually I don’t even need to run a blog, I can just make one.
2. This was a journalism student. The board said he was covering it as a journalist. A journalist for who? Since when does being a journalist empower one to do as they please with no ramifications. I don’t know of an exemption in the penal code for “journalists”.
I today’s internet age it is easy to call oneself a journalist. Everyone with a camera and internet connection can be one.
3. This kid chose to go to prison. He had a choice. I actually admire his convictions here. I think more people should stand up for what they believe in, he just happened to be wrong.
David wrote: “throwing a journalist who is chronicling the event into prison.”
I don’t see where it says they threw him into prison for the student protests.
The case regarding the SF police had to do with damage to a cop car that was apparently federal property. If it wasn’t federal property, he would have been covered by California shield law.
The real story is the ongoing “what makes a reporter a reporter” debate. I would think being in the school of journalism would at least partially qualify you for some of the perks.
[i]”In today’s internet age it is easy to call oneself a journalist. Everyone with a camera and internet connection can be one.”[/i]
This is a good and complicating point. It is less clear today who is a journalist and who is not.
However, I suspect a few focused questions could ferret things out.
[b]1. Were the actions of the self-described reporter consistent with those of a journalist? In other words, was he observing the situation, asking questions, taking notes and so on? Or was he participating in the activities of the protesters?[/b]
If his actions at the scene were not consistent with him being a journalist, then regardless of his employement or lack of employment for a publication, he should not be given leeway under the law.
[b]2. Is he employed by a recognized publication–that is, one with a readership–or does he sell his reports to one or more recognized publications as a stringer?[/b]
If his work is not published, then he’s not really a journalist.
[b]3. Why was he covering the event in question? [/b]
Was he there to tell the story to the wider public? Or were the other protesters simply a group of his friends?
If he was a part of the group protesting–such as a friend of the protesters–he should not be given journalist leeway.
Ultimately, if the weight of the evidence suggests he was in fact covering the story and not a part of it, the question of prosecution in my mind rests on whether his breaking the law was a necessary part of covering the story and whether he harmed anyone for doing what he did.
It seems like Josh Wolf could not have covered the story without trespassing; and he harmed no one. So I think the better part of valor is to let him off.
[i]” I don’t know of an exemption in the penal code for “journalists”.[/i]
How about this one: [quote]Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, [b]or of the press …[/b] [/quote]
Where does the BOR say a member of the press can brake any law they choose to write a story. If they wasn’t to write a story about the world of methamphetamine does that give them the right to use, produce, transport and sell meth. Why the heck not.
Do you see a difference between smoking crank in writing a story and following people into a building?
Of course I see the difference, that’s part of the reason for my post. Which laws would you allow “journalists” to break for a story. Should a “journalist” be allowed to walk into a homicide scene to take pictures?
Did Mr. Wolf inform the police prior, to the incident, he was a “journalist” reporting on the incident and ask permission to enter? There were multiple avenues Mr Wolf could have taken to prevent this incident. Unfortunately he failed to do so.