Serving time in a jail cell is not in a journalist’s job description, but 24-year-old freelance blogger and videographer Josh Wolf has been sitting in a federal jail in Dublin, CA since the beginning of August for refusing to hand over his unpublished footage of an anti-G8 protest to federal investigators.

A federal grand jury, the FBI, and the Joint Terrorism Taskforce are demanding Wolf turn over outtakes from a Mission District anarchist march on July 8, 2005.

The federal government now wants the footage because the stated interest in the federal grand jury trial is alleged vandalism of a San Francisco Police Department patrol car.

On Aug. 23 the San Francisco Bay Guardian quoted an entry in the SFPD’s chronological report of the protest describing the damage: “there was a police vehicle facing eastbound on 23rd St., almost at Bartlett St.... There were big pieces of concrete, shaped rocks under the vehicle. The right rear taillight was broken with a piece of concrete rock embedded inside the light panel."

They managed to turn a case about a broken taillight over to federal investigators.

In a declaration filed with the US District Court, Wolf argues that the SFPD’s real interests were in discovering information about Anarchist Action, the organizers of the protest, and used the broken taillight as a way of federalizing the case, thus circumventing the California Shield Law.

The need for a federal shield law is more apparent now than ever.

Since his imprisonment, Wolf has received support from the Society of Professional Journalists, the National Lawyers Guild, the Grand Jury Resistance Project and various local publications such as the San Francisco Sentinel and the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

Also jumping to his defense was District 5 Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, who expressed his outrage during an Aug. 10 Rules Committee meeting.

“What is occurring with Mr. Wolf I don’t think is anything dissimilar or irregular with the federal government invoking what I think are excessive use of their interest in enroaching or intruding upon the civil liberties and the privacy protections of Americans,” Mirkarimi said.

One of the main functions a free press serves in any democratic society is to hold elected officials responsible for their decisions and actions. The use of confidential sources is no doubt crucial to this process.

California, along with 30 other states and the District of Columbia, has recognized this by enacting shield laws protecting journalists from having to reveal confidential sources. Eighteen other states have also adopted some form of confidentiality privilege.

Yet on Aug. 14 the Contra Costa Times reported that the three most severe prison sentences in American history for journalists withholding confidential sources have occurred over the past five years. However, if the past tells us anything it’s that the federal government’s interest peaks in a controversial situation and the national security risk is sure to manifest itself.

Without such protections as a federal shield law, independent journalists are merely reduced to investigators who supply information to the federal government rather than professional reporters whose job it is to present facts and news to the public.