A federal judge who held a veteran investigative reporter in contempt of court for not revealing her confidential sources erred in his decision that the civil case outweighs First Amendment protections.

Veteran journalist Catherine Herridge, who worked for Fox News and CBS, must pay an $800-a-day fine until she reveals her confidential source in the case to the court. U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, in Washington, D.C., has stayed the fine until Herridge and her lawyers can mount an appeal.

At the heart of the case is a Herridge multiple story report for Fox News in 2017 based on a confidential FBI report investigating the ties between a Chinese scientist and the Chinese military and whether the scientist had lied on her immigration papers.

The scientist, Dr. Yanping Chen, a Chinese American who is the president of the University of Management and Technology in Arlington, Virginia, sued the FBI after no charges were filed. She says their leaked report violated the Privacy Act and damaged her reputation.

Cooper argued her right to privacy outweighed the First Amendment rights of Herridge. But the judge should have ordered the FBI to release all information in the case, not go after a journalist who has First Amendment protections. If journalists can be subpoenaed and force to reveal confidential sources, such sources — who are often government whistleblowers in significant cases — will have no interest in talking to reporters to reveal wrongdoing.

The action of the judge will certainly have a chilling effect on news gathering. One might see the judge’s point of view if the news report were the only way to find out who leaked the FBI information, but it’s not. Again, the FBI and other government agencies should be interrogated to determine who leaked the report.

Many states have reporter shield laws, which protect unpublished notes and other materials from government taking without a hearing and other legal requirements. In most cases, the government must show that there is no other way to obtain the information, that a crime has been committed, and that justice will not be served if the reporter does not reveal the information.

Unfortunately, there is no such federal shield law. Now is the time for Congress to pass one. It has been proposed in the past but has failed to gain traction.

Without a federal shield law, it will be open season for judges and lawyers to trample First Amendment rights of an independent press, which makes our democracy work.

— Tribune News Service