CBS Seizes Confidential Files of Recently Fired Journalist Catherine Herridge
“The position of CBS has alarmed many, including the union, as an attack on free press principles by one of the nation’s most esteemed press organizations.”
CBS recently fired the journalist Catherine Herridge, which is a shame because, in an age when most journalists are little more than Democrat activists, Herridge is the real deal. Perhaps even more troubling is the news that CBS has seized confidential files from Herridge, who was already battling to protect her sources.
Professor Jonathan Turley wrote about this at The Hill:
CBS faces uproar after seizing investigative journalist’s files
“Anyone who isn’t confused really doesn’t understand the situation.” Those words, from CBS icon Edward R. Murrow, came to mind this week after I spoke with journalists at the network.
There is trouble brewing at Black Rock, the headquarters of CBS, after the firing of Catherine Herridge, an acclaimed investigative reporter. Many of us were shocked after Herridge was included in layoffs this month, but those concerns have increased after CBS officials took the unusual step of seizing her files, computers and records, including information on privileged sources.
The position of CBS has alarmed many, including the union, as an attack on free press principles by one of the nation’s most esteemed press organizations.
I have spoken confidentially with current and former CBS employees who have stated that they could not recall the company ever taking such a step before. One former CBS journalist said that many employees “are confused why [Herridge] was laid off, as one of the correspondents who broke news regularly and did a lot of original reporting.”
That has led to concerns about the source of the pressure. He added that he had never seen a seizure of records from a departing journalist, and that the move had sent a “chilling signal” in the ranks of CBS.
Many people who are familiar with Herridge’s work note that she is one of the few journalists working today who has challenged claims and narratives put out by Joe Biden and the Biden administration, which only makes this situation look even more suspicious.
David Strom writes at Hot Air:
Herridge is one of the best reporters in the business and one of the only ones outside of Fox News willing to challenge the Biden Administration’s gaslighting. She has covered a number of stories few others would touch, and for that sin, she was just let go by CBS.
Not just let go; it did something unprecedented: it seized her files filled with confidential information, including sources – even her files dating back to before she worked for CBS.
It’s hard to imagine this was done for any reason other than crippling her ability to pursue stories, and those stories were not good for the Biden Administration. The union is up in arms, and free speech advocates are livid. But CBS is sticking to its guns: Herridge must be silenced.
People are talking on Twitter/X.
This looks suspicious. I've worked at two newspapers, a wire service and a syndicated columnist. I also spent 23 years at ABC News. When I left those jobs, none of those outlets asked for my files. I've never heard of this happening. https://t.co/YQyg7t4gMd
— Brit Hume (@brithume) February 22, 2024
CBS seized her files so they could give them to the corrupt FBI and its surveillance state cronies to help them hunt down and punish her sources. The American Stasi simply will not allow any criticism of its tyranny. https://t.co/OqQGLPh0gE
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) February 22, 2024
And silence from her colleagues has shades of NY Post laptop story being locked off of Twitter. https://t.co/4YQEFFJGg8
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) February 22, 2024
The silence from journalists over CBS seizing Catherine Herridge's files after firing her last week is deafening.
— Boo (@IzaBooboo) February 22, 2024
Herridge posted this update from SAG-AFTRA:
Important update via @sagaftra https://t.co/4LAYhnpil5
— Catherine Herridge (@CBS_Herridge) February 22, 2024
Text of their statement:
SAG-AFTRA strongly condemns CBS News’ decision to seize Catherine Herridge’s reporter notes and research from her office, including confidential source information. This action is deeply concerning to the union because it sets a dangerous precedent for all media professionals and threatens the very foundation of the First Amendment.
It is completely inappropriate for an employer to lay off a reporter and take the very unusual step of retaining and searching the reporter’s files, inclusive of confidential source identification and information. 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.
To borrow a favorite phrase of the left, this is not normal.
Featured image via YouTube.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
If employer issues employee a company laptop computer, everything the employee puts on that computer could become the property of the employer. If the employee was using their own personal computer that was bought by employee, the employee could refuse to hand it over and lawyer up and fight the employer. Either way, consider backing up all files to the cloud, with online back up service, in case your computer mysteriously goes missing.
This is usually something applied to intellectual property rights, and in most cases quite rightly so and tied to future profits/products produced thanks to that intellectual property and its exploitation thereof.
However for this to be applied to story contacts and background information from those contacts places this in a whole other ball park and people are quite right to question why this was done to this former journalist and most likely not to any of the others who were laid off??
Finally, given all we have come to know about the corporate media these last 8 years…anyone with their name in those notes should be fearful for retribution coming their way from the Democrat weaponised government machine.
Do NOT back up anything in “the cloud”. Use encrypted hard drives that use FIPS standards. Apricorn sells them.
Info: OpenSource self-hosted “cloud” software project called NextCloud looks to have become viable, or close. Lets you self-host on yr own hdwr, w/ “secure” remote access via teh interwebz.
Privacy-oriented services available that’ll host it for you w/ the risks that go with 3rd party storage.
I’ll have a take in a week, and know pretty solidly in 3-6 months: deploying it for a project.
I am not a lawyer, but I can say that hings do NOT work that way.
An employer does NOT automatically become the owner of everything an employee puts in a company-issued computer.
For that reason, some companies include intellectual property clauses in their employment contracts. Even in that case, they likely can have a claim over intellectual property created on company time, using company equipment. Something you own or created pre-employment will usually remain your property.
Now, if one can not afford the legal battle, that’s another topic.
Best written IP terms I’ve seen were GE’s. Very clear n crisp about what’s in and what’s out.
Look for New York State to declare your IP terms are what they’ve just decided they are, when they realize The Orange Crush still has IP claim on his books. Can’t do any harm. It’s not like NYC has much of a media or publishing industry. Oh, wait…
(I wonder if they’ve told him what his media company interest is worth yet.)
If you think that’s sufficient, ask Sharyl Atkisson. The fedguv actively penetrated her computer remotely (so she claims, and I find it entirely plausible).
Mike Benz (in Tucker’s recent interview) lays out quite clearly what role the MSM has been assigned to play by the intelligence community. It’s not to be a “free press,” and it hasn’t for most of a century.
I remember watching a video she put up somewhere showing her files being actively deleted while she watched.
I saw that too. It was her Wikipedia page.
Nuns shouldn’t work in brothels.
Galling, but, unsurprising. Herridge possessed the integrity and objectivity to question and challenge Dhimmi-crat propaganda and crime boss/dotard, Biden’s, Narratives(TM), so, CBS maliciously fired her and obsequiously offers her up to Biden and the Dhimmi-crats, as a sacrifice.
Just another day at the office for the dutifully slavish and servile Dhimmi-crat media lapdogs/trained seals/shills/propagandists.
Sean Davis is correct. Her sources will be given to the Cheka and they will be arrested or harassed by the IRS.
This is not garnering nearly enough attention. We should be hearing prominent Republicans demanding testimony from both Herridge and CBS executives.
While we know that the vast majority of the journalists/press favor and promote the Democrats and their agenda, there is still supposed to be freedom of those journalists/press to conduct real journalism and to provide information to the public.
This is clearly a violation of that freedom, and if there is no real push-back, no real uproar, the violations will become the norm, and “freedom of the press” will become a distant memory.
“Freedom of the propagandists.”
FIFY
There is no press, only journaliars. The “press” otherwise known as “media” is a corporation that serves the left wing regime.
Believe in half of what you see and none of what you hear.
“We should be hearing prominent Republicans demanding testimony”
Come on, they’re already overburdened with hearings on subjects they will do nothing to remedy afterwards.
What CBS is doing here is a huge break with tradition but legally? Probably falls under the ownership of the employer unless there was some specific language in her contract that made clear what work product she retrained ownership of. That doesn’t make it OK but sometimes the adage the law is an ass takes center stage.
You may be correct, but it would be surprising if such an employment agreement were to include her work/research from her time with Fox News.
If she uploaded that data onto her CBS computer or other electronic devices that’s an indication she was working on the stories while employed at CBS. Hard copy files may potentially be different though the same sort of argument applies. If she wasn’t working on stories at CBS based on those files why were they in office at CBS?
Again I am not taking the side of CBS but I am pointing out that journalistic traditions are not the what is ultimately going to matter. Frankly she made a huge error. She damn well knows that legacy media organs are now close to being regime stenographers who tow the ideological line of their corporate masters and advertisers. Expecting ‘traditions’ to provide a shield was foolish in the extreme, especially given her own experiences.
If Herridge didn’t have all her confidential files encrypted and password protected with strong passwords for such an eventuality then shame on her. Hope this is a valuable lesson to other journalists that their confidential files can be seized at any time and they take appropriate measures to ensure that their confidential information stays confidential. It shouldn’t be necessary but here we are and there you go.
With all the Big Tech companies (and, major U.S. banks) playing footsie with the FBI, having turned over customer info and records without even demanding a warrant in innumerable instances since year 2016, password protection is not going to be an obstacle to these reprobates obtaining customer data. We’re at the point, now, where a simple, warrantless request made to Google or Dropbox, is sufficient for these companies to comply with an FBI demand, given how feckless and how eager they are to ingratiate themselves with corrupt federal law enforcement agencies.
And that’s why it’s insane to put any kind of confidential, sensitive material online in one of those cloudy services like Dropbox, Google Drive or MS One Drive. Just don’t do it. If you do you have lost all control over your information. So just don’t do it.
I agree completely. But, I suspect even if she used it, she probably didn’t use it correctly. The VAST majority of enterprise/institutional Windows users select the native Bitlocker for their encryption option. While Bitlocker is generally secure enough, like many full-disk encryption utilities, it’s vulnerable when the machine isn’t completely powered down, which is often the case for laptop users; most laptop users place their machine in ‘sleep’ mode rather than powering it down. Better corporate IT departments will disable sleep mode for the laptops they issue to employees for just this reason.
Encryption is complicated and really takes some research and employing best practices to make it work. Most people, even those who want to protect their data, either don’t understand it or use it correctly.
No, not really that hard. You can create a perfectly usable password protected and encrypted disk image (dmg) on any modern mac where you can store your confidential files and material. And if you use a strong password all the better for it.
Computer Rule #1: AHAB. (Always Have A Backup).
Computer Rule #2: Always have more than one backup.
(Both learned from personal experience.)
See, they were right. They told me if I voted for Trump, reporters would be silenced, their notes confiscated and news stories unwanted by the Administration would be quashed.
I agree in principal that seizing her files is wrong and certainly eliminates any employee / employer trust, however what really matters is what is in the employment contract she and the company agreed to.
The devil will be in the details of what is in that contract. She is not some inexperienced reporter on their first contract, she of all people should know how to protect information and sources. If she failed to do so it would be a direct reflection on her.
Given the behavior of the CBS and the government with Sharyl Attkisson hopefully she protected herself.
I am amazed that these journaliars working for these left wing companies are surprised when they are treated poorly by the regime.
They toed the company line, were good little leftists, and when they were no longer useful, they are discarded.
Atkinson and Herrige knowingly work for these people. They shouldn’t be surprised when you sleep with someone with herpes, you wake up with herpes.
Just another step towards the empowerment of the creeping deep state totalitarianism that is increasingly ruling us all.
You WILL love Big Brother.
https://thefederalist.com/2024/02/23/the-american-stasi-controls-what-you-hear-and-see-to-control-what-you-think-and-do/
CBS wants the Hunter Biden investigation permanently spiked and silencec
CBS – Censorship By Seizure
Given her extensive experience with the corruption of DC and the press I’m amazed she trusted putting her files on NBC’s server.
Her stories are one thing, NBC paid for them. But her research files and particularly her contacts are a different subject altogether.
Psssssst……. It is CBS, not NBC. (Just trying to keep the record straight.)
I don’t believe I read where she said they were the only copies she had and from her experience I would be very surprised if that was the case
The point I was trying to make isn’t whether she still has her copies, which presumably she does, it’s that they have her contact list etc. and can exploit it.
Catherine Herridge is a very good, no nonsense reporter. I was concerned when she left Fox. Hopefully, she’ll be back somewhere to continue her work.
“Tail Gunner” Joe McCarthy was the famous target of Edward R. Murrow. Murrow was correct on McCarthy’s blunt tactics but missed out that he was correct on Communist infiltration in the US. CBS now is using similar blunt tactics to cover over for Communist infiltration. Well…Edward.. are you happy now?
Glen Beck had an interesting take on the future course of events. He highlighted a book about how the USSR was “invited” into Eastern Europe after WWII. Communist agitators infiltrated in government leadership, their street thugs disrupted at ground level… together squeezed the population to demand that the disruption be stopped.. and guess who came to dinner? We have the top and bottom now in place… mayhem is their tool now. If Trump wins … all Hell will break out as planned to squeeze until .. well… the same type of dinner guests.
CBS has declined in quality over the years-Cronkite who made an image of being a Middle American despite being a liberal, was all wet as to the facts on the ground during the Tet Offensive in 1968 which was an American military victory , Rather who made his reputation on Watergate lost it in Swift Boat and the 60 Minutes crew always pushed the edge of journalistic ethics ,. Bernard Goldberg, a former CBS correspondent m, wrote a book about the left/liberal corporate culture in CBS
Catherine Herridge, of all people, knew exactly what CBS was like before she moved over there. She’s lucky they didn’t decide to SWAT her on top of it, just for fun.
First, Herridge was not fired as the title of the post indicates. She was laid off. There is a distinct and legal difference between the two terms.
Secondly, as Jonathan Turley notes in the opinion piece cited above, while it may be argued that the notes and records are CBS’s by the work product rules, the promise to confidential informants is upon Herridge and Herridge alone.
CBS has no obligation to honor the confidentiality that Herridge gave her sources.
Herridge is living up to a promise of confidentiality to an informant in another case that is currently in court and she isn’t budging.
See: https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/08/media/herridge-fox-journalist-sources-sanction/index.html
In that case, CBS issued a statement which said that they supported Herridge:
It is interesting that CBS is going through her files which may lead to the disclosure of confidential sources. It almost seems as if they are saying they can violate the “role of a free press,” but others cannot.
Okay, Herridge was technically laid off, but, I’d hope you concede the obvious that this is a transparently politically-motivated firing.
And, what better and underhanded method to avoid the publicity and controversy (and, potential legal repercussions) of firing a politically uncontrollable and inconvenient reporter who refuses to toe the company’s pro-Dhimmi-crat line, than by masking that firing in a round of layoffs of scores of personnel? This is corporate smoke and mirrors, quite obviously.
No, I will not concede that this was a “politically-motivated firing.”
First, as you note, Herridge was laid off. She was not fired.
Herridge was part of 800 people that were laid off by Paramount Global. That represents 3% of the workforce. Surely you aren’t saying the 800 people (20 of which were at CBS News) are all right leaning, or were let go for political reasons.
Included in the layoffs were Jeff Pegues was CBS News chief national affairs and justice correspondent, (often accused of being left leaning.)
In addition Christina Ruffini, a correspondent covering foreign affairs and the State Department, and Pamela Falk, a correspondent covering the United Nations were let go. Neither has ever been known to criticize any Democrat President while being critical of Bush and Trump policies.
(BTW – the distinction between “laid off” and “fired” has implications for contracts of the people. If they are laid off, Paramount doesn’t have to explain any reason and can avoid any type of arbitration. The layoff v. being fired has further implications for whether the people can work for other outlets.)
I apologize that the facts of the layoffs of 800 people doesn’t match your theory,
Milhouse redux.
Nonsense. A mass layoff of 800 is an unparalleled opportunity to divest oneself of one or two “turbulent priests.”
“La presse, c’est moi.”
The employer owns all files on their computers in the office they assign to you. Traditions in Media may have been otherwise, but so what. I hope she had backups at home, but she probably didn’t.
Obviously this was no routine layoff. She was onto some story they wanted to squash.
Looks like she was getting way too close to something they didn’t like. I’m guessing they had to protect their pedophile-in-chief.
Sharyl Attkisson worked for CBS. That went well.
I think this boils down to the Yanping Chen case.
as someone else stated
yeah ,,allll so they can turn the info over to the bcr bidencrimesyndicate
and then return her materials to her
Looks like of the major players in the space only Brit Hume has the stones to say something about this. Good for him.
Looks like Ms Herridge got too much info on Obama’s role in Joe & Hunter’s side business.
Journalists must learn to become anti-fragile. That might ultimately mean being indepedent contractor, using your own equipment. Be prepared to have everything confiscated when getting screened at airports. Keep everything backed up offline somewhere else.
Well, that horse is already out of the gate and running. James O’Keefe, Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson…