Opinion: Jonathan Turley Says the Supreme Court Must Take Catherine Herridge's Case and Protect Reporters' Confidential Sources
Turley argues a lawsuit by an alleged former Chinese military colonel turned a Privacy Act claim into a way to force a reporter to name her sources. These are his views; the fines are currently rescinded.
Fox News legal analyst Jonathan Turley argues that a press-freedom case deserves a hearing at the nation's highest court.
The case. Turley describes how former Fox News reporter Catherine Herridge was fined $800 a day to force her to name confidential sources for a 2017 national security story. He says she paid it from her two children's college funds. The suit came from Yanping Chen, who ran the University of Management and Technology in Northern Virginia and who Turley says investigators believe was a colonel in China's People's Liberation Army. The Justice Department declined to prosecute her, but the government ended its contracts with the school after Herridge's report. A court later rescinded the fines, Turley writes, but they return unless the Supreme Court takes the case and reverses the lower courts.
His main point. Chen did not sue for defamation, and Turley notes Herridge is not accused of writing anything false. Chen sued under the Privacy Act, which governs how the government handles private information, claiming officials violated her privacy by talking to Herridge. Turley calls the claim "anemic and dubious" and says much of it was already public, including a whistleblower's account that Chen admitted to being a PLA colonel.
The legal gap. Turley says the D.C. Circuit applies an easy test: the source is central to the case and other avenues are exhausted. He says that standard could have let Nixon officials force Woodward and Bernstein to name Deep Throat. He points to the "clear as mud" state of law after Branzburg v. Hayes (1972) and to stronger protections in other circuits. He questions the assigned judge, Obama appointee Christopher Cooper, whose wife, attorney Amy Jeffress, is named in some of Herridge's past stories and represents people who were subjects of her reporting. Justice Brett Kavanaugh said he would have granted a stay when the Court earlier declined one.
The ask. Turley wants the Court to adopt the tougher standard used elsewhere or set a new one, such as asking whether a case would survive summary judgment before ordering disclosure.
Note for readers: this is opinion. Turley is a Fox News analyst, and Herridge is a former Fox reporter. The claims about Chen's military past are his and investigators' characterizations. Chen has her own account, which the column does not include.