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Fox News reporter faces jail for protecting sources

Fox News’ Jana Winter is facing jail time over refusing to reveal her sources in a story about the Aurora theater shooting — and some are questioning how the media is covering her case.

Winter wrote a story in July 2012 about a notebook that Aurora movie theater shooter James Holmes sent his University of Colorado psychiatrist. Winter’s story cited unnamed law enforcement sources and quoted one source as saying the notebook was “full of details about how he was going to kill people.” In January, the judge then currently on the Aurora case gave the okay for Holmes’s lawyers to subpoena Winter. On April 1, the new judge in the case, Carlos Samour Jr., heard arguments from both Holmes’ defense attorney and Winter’s attorney.

FoxNews.com reported that “Samour himself stated that the subpoena to Winter presented her with a ‘Hobson’s Choice.”’

“If forced to testify, Winter would either reveal her confidential sources in the nation's highest profile trial – perhaps destroying her career as an investigative reporter – or spend up to six months in jail,” the Fox News report stated.

On Wednesday, Samour will decide if Winter must go on the witness stand — and her attorney has said that Winter will not answer questions about the identity of her sources.

FoxNews.com, BuzzFeed and The Daily Caller have all reported in recent days about the media coverage that Winter’s case has received. The Daily Caller noted that The New York Times has still not reported on Winter’s case and pulled a Tweet from a CNN reporter based in Denver, Jim Spellman, who wrote, "Observation: If @janawinter ,who may go to jail to protect sources, worked for @nytimes instead of @FoxNews the case would be huge." BuzzFeed, meanwhile, found that the case has only been substantially covered on TV by Fox News.

Fox News contributor and former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who spent 85 days in jail for refusing to give up her source in the Valerie Plame scandal, told BuzzFeed that if Winter “worked for mainstream newspapers or CNN, I think the case would have been covered. There's a certain reluctance because it's Fox News."