On Thursday before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government, former CBS News correspondent Catherine Herridge emerged to give her first set of extended public remarks about her sudden firing from CBS News and what she would describe as a “journalistic rape” and the crossing of “a red line that…should never be crossed again” in the (temporary) seizure of her files that contained sensitive details about sources.
Joined by Sinclair’s Sharyl Attkisson, SAG-AFTRA’s Mary Cavallaro, and the Knight First Amendment Institute’s Nadine Farid Johnson, Herridge spoke out in favor of the bipartisan PRESS Act, which would largely protect journalists from being forced by the government to disclose the identity of their sources.
Herridge has particular interest as, in addition to sudden unemployment, she was recently held in contempt and ordered (pending a stay) to divulge a source relating to a story from her Fox News tenure or face a $500/day fine.
Herridge largely took the high road, such as in her opening statement thanking the House for “taking the time to focus again on the importance of protecting reporter sources and the vital safeguards provided by the PRESS Act”.
She explained what the contempt case has done to her family and the impact it’d have on (actual) journalism (click “expand”):
One of our children recently as …