Democracy requires a free and vibrant press seeking accountability and speaking truth to power, award-winning journalist Catherine Herridge said at a talk in Plaster Auditorium Oct. 2.
While on campus, Herridge taught a one-credit investigative journalism class and delivered her speech titled “The State of Investigative Journalism in the Area of National Security.” Herridge is this semester’s Eugene C. Pulliam Distinguished Visiting Fellow in Journalism.
“Just this week, the D.C. Circuit ruled against me and upheld a lower court decision that has ordered me to disclose confidential reporting sources in a series of national security stories I did at Fox News,” Herridge, a former reporter for Fox News and CBS News, said. “I am so fortunate to have the support of Fox News, my former employer, in this fight to protect press freedom and the First Amendment. We’re living in a time where many corporate media outlets fold and would rather settle than fight for these principles.”
Herridge said 9/11 served as a turning point for a steady decline in the quality of national security reporting.
“But the problem with 9/11 is that there was this — and it’s not really a problem — but there was this tremendous unity the country felt at that time,” Herridge said. “We were on a wartime footing, but it made it harder and harder for journalists to seek accountability to speak truth to power, even in a wartime dynamic, and you felt that you ran the risk of being labeled unpatriotic if you questioned the decision making of the administration.”
During Herridge’s time at CBS News, about a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, she was tasked with writing a story on the lab leak theory.
“No sooner was the story on the air that I got a phone call from a number I didn’t recognize, and it was somebody I worked with at CBS News, and they were just screaming hysterically at me that I had no business doing a story like this,” Herridge said.
Later, Herridge said she found out the person who called her was connected to an academic institution that takes a large amount of money from China.
Herridge said news companies faced a lot of pressure from advertisers, especially big pharma, on the stories they published. Many journalists fear that they will lose access to key documents and places if they start asking tough questions, according to Herridge.
After Herridge got fired from her job at CBS in 2024, the company locked her out of her office and computer.
“My friends joked,” Herridge said. “They were like, ‘Oh my gosh, Catherine, you got fired for committing the crime of journalism.’”
CBS seized all of her reporting records, including handwritten notes, according to Herridge. As a member of the Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists labor union, Herridge received its support.
“I had never seen anything like this before,” Herridge said. “I’m so grateful for my union. SAG-AFTRA, that really stood up for the First Amendment and stood up for journalism. There was a public outcry over the seizure of the records. The union got involved, and eventually CBS News gave the records back to me, and I testified to Congress.”
Herridge said she felt that CBS News had diminished journalism by calling her reporter notes “work product” and treating them like expense reports.
“When the network of Walter Cronkite seizes your reporting files, it is an attack on investigative journalism,” Herridge said. “And I likened it to a journalistic rape, and I stand by what I testified.”
Herridge said she is hopeful that there will be a recommitment to the kind of investigative journalism she has done in her career, and a recommitment to the value of confidential reporting sources.
Senior Megan Pidcock took Herridge’s class and said she appreciated Herridge’s comments about putting good journalism first.
“To hear that that still should be the priority, to get back to more objective journalism and that investigative journalism still has a place, even in sort of almost a dying time,” Pidcock said. “A lot of people say journalism is dead, or print is dead, or whatever. That there is still a place for that is good to hear.”
Maria Pidcock, Megan’s mom, said she found it interesting to hear Herridge speak of current events.
“To hear the inside scoop of really how things happened and how we as citizens weren’t really given the truth at the time because of political reasons or what have you, and so that was kind of empowering to hear her say some things that I felt were truth at the time, but no one else would say that they were,” Maria Pidcock said.
