A student journalist from UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism faces prosecution for being present during a standoff with police in Wheeler Hall where students protested budget cuts last fall. The student claims he was there as a journalist rather than as a protestor. -db
April 16, 2010
By Nanette Asimov
A Bay Area video journalist who spent 7 1/2 months in federal prison three years ago for withholding information from officials is in trouble again for his journalistic efforts.
Now a student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, Josh Wolf, 27, faces a seven-month suspension or worse for being inside the campus’ Wheeler Hall on Nov. 20 during an 11-hour standoff between student occupiers and police.
He is one of at least 63 students – all present during protests over budget cuts last fall – facing discipline.
Wolf says he was filming inside Wheeler Hall as a journalist and should not be prosecuted.
“My role was to witness and document the events that occurred as a member of the press,” he said. “I feel it’s critical that journalists should be able to gain access to cover important events.”
His professors agree. “It’s our position that journalists should have access, regardless of their status as students,” said Rob Gunnison, the journalism school’s director of school affairs. Journalism Dean Neil Henry wrote to the Center for Student Conduct on Wolf’s behalf.
But administrators have been unmoved by the journalist’s “right-to-know” argument.
“The consensus from colleagues with whom I have consulted regarding application of the code of student conduct to students who are also serving in the role of journalists has been that the Code still applies,” Laura Bennett, assistant director of the Center for Student Conduct, wrote in an e-mail to Wolf on April 9.
If Wolf does not accept the suspension and write a 10-page essay answering such questions as “What are your limits as a journalist?” he must face a disciplinary hearing that could end up being worse for the student.
Wolf, in his first year of a two-year master’s degree program, first aimed his video camera at protesters in 2003 as the United States invaded Iraq. He practices “fly-on-the-wall” video journalism, filming subjects in real life, rather than interviewing them.
In 2005, Wolf captured an anarchists’ demonstration in San Francisco turned wild. Someone tried to burn a police car, and an officer’s skull was fractured.
Police demanded Wolf’s uncut footage, which he refused.
California law shields journalists from having to turn over unpublished material. But federal law does not, and because city police get money from the U.S. government, Wolf was prosecuted in federal court.
He served 7 1/2 months in 2006 and 2007. He eventually posted the uncut video on the Web, and prosecutors did not ask him to testify.
“It’s hard not to make the comparison” between then and now, said Wolf, noting that he won’t accept the suspension.
Bennett of the student conduct office did not return calls.
Peter Scheer, director of the nonprofit First Amendment Coalition in San Rafael, said that as a journalist covering news, Wolf may not have known he was doing anything wrong.
“There’s something fundamentally unfair about punishing someone for breaking a rule when he would have been confused about whether that rule applied to him,” said Scheer, who suggested the school set clear rules for student journalists, and apply them to future cases.
As for the video Wolf shot inside Wheeler, campus officials won’t be demanding that footage.
“I was planning on putting together a short video piece,” Wolf said, “but I discovered the footage was corrupt.”
A hearing date for Wolf has not been set.
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