Judge Christopher Cooper, of the US District Court for the District of Columbia, issued a ruling to compel CBS News senior correspondent Catherine Herridge to participate in a deposition regarding the identity of a confidential source or sources she used for a series of 2017 stories published while she worked at Fox News. The order came as a result of a lawsuit filed by Chinese American scientist Yanping Chen against the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
But Cooper’s decision has alarmed press advocates, who worry that it might set a chilling precedent impacting the entire news media. “Investigative journalism cannot function without credible assurances of confidentiality to sources,” Gabe Rottman, a director at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, told me. “While the Privacy Act provides essential protections for the public, using it to breach reporter-source confidentiality poses significant risks to a free press.