Former Fox News and CBS investigative reporter Catherine Herridge is asking the United States Supreme Court to protect her confidential sources, after a federal court ordered her to identify who helped her 2017 reporting on Yanping Chen and held her in civil contempt when she refused, Fox News reported on Monday, October 26.
Source: Fox News
Herridge faces a fine of $800 per day for refusing to reveal the sources. Her 2017 investigation, published while she was at Fox News, examined Chen, the founder of the University of Management and Technology in Arlington, Virginia, which enrolled US military personnel using Pentagon tuition assistance. The reporting raised questions about Chen's alleged past as a colonel in China's People's Liberation Army — an allegation Chen has disputed through her lawsuit — and included photographs appearing to show her in a Chinese military uniform.
Federal authorities had previously investigated Chen over potential immigration violations and counterintelligence concerns, but prosecutors declined to bring charges, and she was never charged with a crime. Chen is now suing the federal government, alleging that officials improperly disclosed her private records to Herridge in violation of the Privacy Act. She contends that identifying the officials responsible for the alleged disclosures is necessary to establish her claims.
According to a filing by Herridge's legal team, the Pentagon later completed a national security review of Chen's university and cut off its military tuition assistance, which the filing put at about $200,000 a month. Herridge refused to identify her sources, arguing that compelling disclosure would undermine journalists' ability to obtain sensitive information from government officials and whistleblowers. A federal judge ordered her to disclose the sources and held her in contempt when she refused, and the US Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld that order.
At the centre of Herridge's petition is a disagreement among federal appeals courts over the reporter's privilege — how judges should weigh a journalist's claim to protect sources in civil cases, an issue the Supreme Court has not comprehensively addressed in more than five decades. Her lawyers argue the D.C. Circuit applied a narrow test focused mainly on whether Chen needed the information and had exhausted other means of getting it, and that courts should also consider the strength of the underlying lawsuit and the consequences of forcing disclosure, particularly where national security sources are involved.
Source: Fox News
In July 2026 the Supreme Court declined an emergency request to pause the $800-a-day fine, with Justice Brett Kavanaugh indicating he would have granted the stay; Herridge's full petition for review is now before the court, which has not yet announced whether it will hear the case. Legal commentator Jonathan Turley, writing in The Hill on October 18-19, urged the court to take the case and clarify the reporter's-privilege standard. Fox News Media has continued to support Herridge's legal fight, including covering her legal fees, despite her departure from the network in 2019.