More new from America, where a blogger has spent more than six months behind  bars in California for refusing to hand over video footage of a violent San Francisco demo a a G8 summit meeting. It is the longest contempt of court sentence served by someone in the media.

A “mediation session” will today try and break the impasse, else he will stay locked up until July.

It is not clear why Josh Wolf, 24, is withholding the video and refusing to testify as there are no  confidential issues involved. He sold part of the tape to local television stations and posted another on his blog.

I wonder if he hopes that his tactics will elevate his blogging status as a martyr, or whether he hopes his determined stand will catch the eye of a newspaper editor to hire him as a journalist. Or does he really have a principle worth fighting for? I would not think so if confidential issues are not at risk. It seems to me that after sticking it out for so long, it’s hard to cave in and save face.  Or is he a champion of the First Amendment?