Longest incarcerated journalist in U.S. history is released

“Whether he is a journalist or not, as many debate, Josh Wolf believed strongly enough in the journalistic principle of protecting his sources that he was willing to spend seven and a half months in a federal prison being faithful to it. Tuesday afternoon, he walked out of the Dublin Federal Correctional Institution in California a free man. Wolf was in prison for refusing to hand over video he shot during a protest in San Francisco in 2005. In a deal brokered between his lawyers and federal prosecutors, Wolf posted the uncut video of the protest on his site, JoshWolf.net, gave prosecutors a copy, told them he had not witnessed any crimes and was released. In exchange, prosecutors acceded to Wolf’s key contention: that he not be made to appear before a grand jury and identify those on his videotape. ‘Journalists absolutely have to remain independent of law enforcement,’ Wolf told reporters outside the gates of the prison. ‘Otherwise, people will never trust journalists’. “