Ex-Fox News Reporter Faces Contempt Charges for Withholding Sources

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A Fox News reporter who has declined to reveal her sources for articles concerning a Chinese American scientist who was the subject of an FBI investigation but was never charged is being considered by a federal judge in Washington, DC, for possible contempt.

Yanping Chen, a Chinese American scientist, sued the Federal Bureau of Investigation, leading to Judge Christopher Cooper’s ruling. 

Catherine Herridge who now works at CBS said that Chen was being investigated by the federal government, citing documents that Fox News had looked through. 

Chen has claimed that information about her was improperly leaked by federal authorities, in violation of the Privacy Act.

Chen subpoenaed Herridge and Fox News in an attempt to establish her case and reveal the identity of the story’s source or sources. 

Fox News and Herridge vigorously opposed the action, claiming that Cooper should revoke the subpoenas due to press protections provided by the First Amendment. 

The protracted legal dispute, which is quickly approaching a pivotal decision point, symbolizes the clash of conflicting interests: the professional duty of a journalist to safeguard sources and the individual’s right to seek damages for alleged government invasions of privacy.

Fox News Reporter’s Secret Sources

EX-Former-News-Reporter-Faces-Contempt-Charges-For-Withholding-Sources
A Fox News reporter who has declined to reveal her sources for articles concerning a Chinese American scientist who was the subject of an FBI investigation but was never charged is being considered by a federal judge in Washington, DC, for possible contempt.

When the judge will make a decision regarding Chen’s motion to find Herridge in contempt is unknown.

Herridge’s stories were released and broadcast by Fox News in 2017. 

This was the same year that the Justice Department informed Chen that she would not be prosecuted for her involvement in a lengthy investigation into whether or not she had lied on U.S. immigration forms about her prior military service.

The reports looked into Chen’s past purported connections to the Chinese military and if she had assisted the Chinese government in obtaining data about US service members by using a professional school she established in Virginia. 

They cited information from her naturalization and immigration forms, an internal FBI PowerPoint presentation, and excerpts from an FBI document describing an interview, among other things that her attorneys claim were leaked from the investigation.

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