Fox news reporter Jana Winter is fighting a court motion ordering that she has to reveal her sources from a story on last years Colorado movie theater massacre. Her story revealed James Holmes’ notebook that he sent to his psychiatrist a few days before he killed 12 people and left 58 injured. Winter will not reveal where she got the information about the notebook from, but Detective Alton Reed said he did not speak with anyone regarding the notebook. The defense is concerned that the person who gave her the information was under a gag order not to talk about it.

During the hearing the defense attorney claims that Winter did not need the information in her story and that, “This is not watergate, we don’t need investigative journalism for this.” I think this is an interesting thing for her to say, in that when someone goes into a movie theater and kills 12 people journalists are going to investigate why. It’s almost as if she is saying this is not as a big of a deal as watergate was. To me it seems that Winter was just questioning those in authority. Her story questioned whether the psychiatrist Holmes sent his notebook to, could have done more to stop him because the psychiatrist knew of his state of mind from reading the notebook, which in my mind is a good point.

I’m also interested in how this notebook could affect Holmes right to a fair trial. He killed 12 people, what does sending his notebook to his psychiatrist have to do with his trial? At the same time I can see the defense wanting know if someone on a gag order broke the law and talked. But is it worth sending a reporter to jail for?