If Catherine Herridge’s petition to the US supreme court fails, she’ll be on the hook for a daily fine until she discloses her sources – a case unsettling press freedom organizations
View image in fullscreen Catherine Herridge. Photograph: Caroline Gutman/The Guardian For 18 days this summer, veteran journalist Catherine Herridge walked to her Washington DC mailbox and dropped off a check for $800. The money was required by law to cover a judge-imposed sanction after she was found in contempt of court in 2024 for refusing to disclose her sources. It fell to her 21-year-old son James to provide the moral support Herridge needed. “He understands the pressure that I’ve been under,” she said. “It was very hard, personally.”
The check drop is now on hold. The judge who issued that order, Christopher R Cooper, has since clarified that Herridge doesn’t need to pay the fine until she has a chance to plead her case to the supreme court, which she petitioned late last week.
If that petition is unsuccessful, and there is good reason to believe it will fail, then something rather extraordinary in American history will commence: Herridge will be on the hook for the daily fines until or unless she reveals her sourcing for a series of 2017 stories about the Chinese-American scientist Yanping Chen, who had been federally investigated – but not charged – over her ties to China’s military and whether a Virginia school she operated was secretly aiding the communist country.
It’s a case that has unsettled not only Herridge and her family, but also the community of press freedom organizations that exist to ensure against the unthinkable – a reporter being forced to disclose confidential sources, shattering the foundation of national security reporting in the public interest.
“Reporter-source confidentiality is the lifeblood of investigative journalism,” said Seth Stern, chief of advocacy at Freedom of the Press Foundation. “Whistleblowers in a position to expose abuses won’t trust journalists to protect them, and won’t come forward, if they believe reporters will be threatened with financial ruin for not outing them in court.”
Unless the supreme court intervenes, or the matter is resolved via a settlement, that worst case scenario might be just around the corner.
“I built my career on developing confidential sources, and the day I disclose, my career is over,” Herridge, 62, said in an interview last week in a law firm conference room a few blocks from the White House. “I mean, I’m finished. How can anyone trust me in the future? But it’s bigger than me. I’m in the last chapter of my career. This is really for people who have another 10 or 20 years ahead of them, and for another generation of journalists. It’s for their benefit.”
View image in fullscreen Catherine Herridge: ‘This is really for people who have another 10 or 20 years ahead of them, and for another generation of journalists. It’s for their benefit.’ Photograph: Caroline Gutman/The Guardian Still, she acknowledged, “the fines are designed to break you as a journalist, mentally and financially.”
Although Herridge was found in civil contempt, if she refuses to pay the daily fine, she could be held in criminal contempt and put in jail.
Herridge has only been able to pay the fees and litigate the case with the support of her former employer, Fox News , which has continued to cover her top-level legal representation even though she has not worked for the network in seven years.
“This is a…