Online Journalist Honored for Upholding Freedom

http://blog.aflcio.org/2007/05/04/online-journalist-honored-for-upholding-freedom/

Online Journalist Honored for Upholding Freedom

by James Parks, May 4, 2007

Thomas Jefferson once said, “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.” Last night, members of The Newspaper Guild-CWA (TNG-CWA) honored several of their peers who have demonstrated the power of journalists to make social change. May 3 marked World Press Freedom Day, with the focus this year on violence against journalists. (If you’re concerned about freedom of the press, check out coverage and get resources at Media Channel.)


Josh Wolf spent 226 days in jail for refusing to reveal a news source.

Online journalist Josh Wolf received the Herbert Block Freedom Award at the Guild’s annual Freedom Fund Awards banquet in Washington, D.C. Wolf spent more than seven months in a federal detention center for refusing to turn over a protest video to authorities. His time in jail set a record for a journalist refusing to comply with a subpoena. Wolf’s video shows footage of the 2005 G-8 Summit in San Francisco’s Mission District, during which a police officer suffered a fractured skull. He had shown parts of the video on his website, www.joshwolf.net/blog, but authorities wanted it all, in addition to his testimony.Says TNG-CWA President Linda Foley:

Josh Wolf spent 226 days in jail upholding the principle that journalists should not be investigators for the government.

The Block award is named for a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist who died in 2001.

Meanwhile, Lisa Chedekel and Matthew Kauffman received the 2006 Heywood Broun Award for stories investigating the deployment to Iraq of soldiers who suffer from mental illness and other psychological conditions.

FULL story at link.