SAN FRANCISCO — Journalism groups decried the jailing of a video journalist and other recent court rulings pressuring the press to divulge information to the government.

The news media becomes an information-gathering arm of law enforcement when journalists are ordered to give up confidential sources or unpublished material, said Tony Overman, president of the National Press Photographers Association, at an Aug. 5 press conference.

"When news sources believe that statements or actions observed or reported by journalists find their way into the hands of police or prosecutors, those sources will be less willing — or flat-out afraid — to cooperate with the media," Overman said.

The photographers association and the Society of Professional Journalists announced they would help pay for the legal defense of freelance video journalist Joshua Wolf.

In related news, Editor & Publisher reported that the annual convention of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) in San Francisco passed a resolution on Aug. 4 condemning "anti-press policies" adopted by the Bush administration.

“This is the first statement against general anti-press policies in an administration in at least 30 years,” said David Mindich, author of the resolution, as quoted by E&P. Mindich teaches journalism and mass communication at Saint Michael’s College in Colchester, Vt.

"Policies that members of the leading group of journalism academics (with 3,500 members) asked the White House to abandon included tight restrictions on the flow of information, 'staged town meetings,' refusal to allow photos of coffins returning from Iraq, 'massive reclassification of documents,' attempts to consolidate media, use of 'bribes' to columnists and distribution of uncredited video news releases, and 'using the courts to pressure journalists to give up their sources and to punish them for obtaining leaked information,'" according to E&P.

A federal judge in San Francisco ordered Wolf jailed this week for refusing to hand over unaired video he shot during a July 2005 protest in which a police car was vandalized and an officer was injured.

Judith Miller, the former New York Times reporter who was jailed for 85 days last year, tried to interview Wolf on Aug. 5 at the federal prison in Dublin but was turned away by guards.

Officials prohibited press interviews with Wolf, said Miller, who was visiting family in northern California.

"I was just there to express my personal moral support for him," Miller told the Associated Press. "When I went to jail I had The New York Times behind me and a lot of publicity, and Josh Wolf did not have any of that. Anybody who looks at this trend has got to be worried about the obstacles being thrown in the way of a free and open press."

Wolf's defense lawyer, Jose Luis Fuentes, said jail officials blocked him from seeing his client until Aug. 5, five days after his incarceration. Wolf remains steadfast in refusing to surrender the footage, Fuentes said.

"It smells and appears to be punishment, which is not what the civil contempt order is about — it's about coercion," he said. "If he can't make phone calls to his mother or have visits from his mother, and he is denied visits from his attorney, it would seem that's all punishment."

A call to a prison spokesman was not returned late on Aug. 5.

The journalism groups said recent court actions had violated First Amendment rights and eroded the news media's ability to serve as a public-interest watchdog. Journalists were also jailed in 2004, 2001, 2000, 1996 and 1994.

"We must stand together as journalists, scholars, educators and American citizens for freedom of the press, on behalf of our country," said Julianne Newton, a professor at the University of Oregon's journalism school.

Meanwhile, San Francisco Chronicle reporters Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada are fighting a federal subpoena that would force them to reveal the source of leaked grand jury testimony in the steroid investigation involving Giants slugger Barry Bonds.

The reporters' lawyers argued on Aug. 4 that the First Amendment protected them from revealing their source for the secret testimony of Barry Bonds and other elite athletes ensnared in the government's steroids probe.

Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada are fighting a subpoena compelling them to testify before a grand jury investigating the leak. The two reporters published a series of stories and a book based largely on transcripts of testimony by Bonds, Jason Giambi and others who testified in the investigation of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative.

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White peppered federal prosecutors and Chronicle attorneys with questions during the two-hour hearing. He did not immediately rule on the reporters' motion to quash the subpoena, but suggested his hands were tied by U.S. Supreme Court precedent that is not on the side of the journalists.

"How can I, as the district court, rule to the contrary?" White asked Chronicle attorney Jonathan Donnellan. "Tell me how I can do that?"

Donnellan responded that the precedent demanding that reporters reveal their sources involved "serious criminal conduct."

"How can you say that this is not serious?" White replied.

The judge noted the alleged criminal conduct being investigated includes possible perjury and obstruction of justice by government officials, defendants in the BALCO probe and their attorneys — all of whom have sworn they weren't the source of the leak.

Government attorney Brian Hershman said the government was investigating "a serious breach of trust."

White did not indicate when he would rule on the reporters' motion.

Outside court, the reporters remained steadfast they would not reveal their sources, even if the judge forced them to go before the grand jury. They then could be found in contempt and jailed for months for refusing to testify.

"We're not going to reveal our sources," Fainaru-Wada said.

Donnellan urged White to consider the reporters' First Amendment rights. He also pointed out that a lot of good came from their reporting on the steroids probe: Major League Baseball toughened its steroids-testing policy; sentences for steroid distribution were toughened; and the public awareness of the dangers of steroids was raised.

"The value of the leaked information here is very high," Donnellan said.

Most states, he noted, including California, have shield laws protecting reporters in criminal probes. No such law exists in federal cases, the judge noted.

"Congress hasn't spoken," White said.

The Supreme Court ruled in the 1972 decision Branzburg v. Hayes that reporters, like everyone else, must "respond to relevant questions put to them in the course of a valid grand jury investigation or criminal trial."

Williams and Fainaru-Wada are the latest reporters to become entangled in the federal government's ramped-up efforts to investigate leaks.

On Aug. 1, a federal appeals court in New York ruled that federal prosecutors investigating a leak about a terrorism funding probe can see the phone records of two New York Times reporters. The same day, Wolf was jailed in the video-footage dispute.