CBS Seizes Fired Investigative Reporter Catherine Herridge’s Files, as Free Speech Defenders Raise Alarm

Feb. 26—Constitutional lawyer Jonathan Turley and the SAG-AFTRA labor union which represents news broadcast journalists and news writers and editors (among others) raised a hue and cry on Feb. 22 after CBS not only laid off its lead investigative reporter, Catherine Herridge, but seized her files, computers, and records, including information on her privileged sources. Writing in The Hill, Turley called the seizure “shocking,” warning that CBS’s action suggests “that it will allow unnamed individuals to rifle through Herridge’s files to determine what will remain with the network and what will be returned to the reporter. That could fundamentally alter how reporters operate and how willing sources are to trust assurances that they will be protected.”

Catherine Herridge

Praising Herridge, who formerly worked at Fox News, as “an old-school investigative journalist,” Turley pointed to suspicions about where the decision may have come from:

“The timing of Herridge’s termination immediately raised suspicions in Washington. She was pursuing stories that were unwelcomed by the Biden White House and many Democratic powerhouses, including the Hur report on Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents that discussed his diminished mental capacity, the Biden Ukraine corruption scandal and the Hunter Biden laptop. She continued to pursue these stories despite reports of pushback from CBS executives, including CBS News President Ingrid Ciprian-Matthews.”

Turley suggests that SAG-AFTRA should consider seeking a court injunction to secure Herridge’s files and bar their review by CBS until the court rules on the issue of confidential and proprietary claims on those files.

SAG-AFTRA’s statement “strongly condemns” the CBS decision as “a dangerous precedent for all media professionals [which] threatens the very foundation of the First Amendment…. From a First Amendment standpoint, a media corporation with a commitment to journalism calling a reporter’s research and confidential source reporting ‘proprietary information’ is both shocking and absurd … a serious break with traditional practices which supports the immediate return of reporting materials.”