Katie Couric attends the "Sully" New York premiere. (Photo : Getty Images/ Jim Spellman)
"Under the Gun" director, Katie Couric has faced a $13M defamation lawsuit. As a result, Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL) is hoping the response is affirmative in a $13 million lawsuit against Couric, Epix and Stephanie Soechtig over the film "Under the Gun."
According to Hollywood Reporter, Couric asks in the film which premiered in January during the Sundance Film Festival, "If there are no background investigations for gun purchasers, how do you prevent terrorists or felons from purchasing a gun?"
"Under the Gun" portrays members of VCDL Patricia Webb and Daniel Hawes in about nine seconds of silence to responsed to Couric's question, but from the plaintiffs, they actually provided an answer.
The complaint filed in Virginia court stated that the manipulated footage wrongly informed viewers that the VCDL members had been stumped and had no basis for their role on background checks, Document Cloud report on the full complain.
The VCDL asserts that the film's director, Soechtig, operated with an "agenda" and that "although the Defendants were aware that their intentional edits were misrepresenting and misled Couric's exchange with the VCDL, they denied to remove the manipulated clip or to present the footage of what actually happened."
The VCDL must convince a judge that a non-statement is in fact a statement capable of being proven false or true. The plaintiff also will have to evade a challenge that the First Amendment avails filmmakers editing leeway, even for the allegedly misleading. (The complaint, in addition to other things, says that the defendants revealed actual malice by using "manipulative lighting techniques" to cast shadows on the VCDL members' faces.) And even if the VCDL wins this, the group will have to show how their reputations were damaged.
On the latter case, the lawsuit notes, "The fictional exchange is defamatory as it holds the Plaintiffs up as objects of ridicule by representing that falsely, as experts in their respective pro-Second Amendment exchanges, they had no basis for their opposition to global background checks."
The complaint continues and says that it was also defamatory per se as to each of the three Plaintiffs. "Firstly, the exchange prejudices the VCDL in its trade as a pro-Second Amendment advocacy group. It highlights that the organization is unfit to, and failed to, perform its mission: to defend other's right to defend themselves. Secondly, the fictional trade prejudices Webb in her exchange as a licensed firearms dealer by wrongly conveying that she missed the knowledge regarding background checks, a need for every gun sale at her store. Thirdly, it prejudices Hawes in his profession as an attorney who practices litigation involving personal defense and firearms by conveying that he lacks the oral advocacy and legal expertise skills needed to perform his duties."
In May, the filmmakers responded to the controversy over how the film was edited. At the time, Soechtig said in a statement that there are a wide range of views expressed in the film. "My intention was to provide a halt for the viewer to have time to consider this important question before giving the facts on Americans' opinions on background checks. I did not intended to make anyone look bad and if anyone felt that way, I apologize," Fortune reported.
Couric supported Soechtig's statement saying, "I am very proud of the film."
In response to the lawsuit, a spokesperson for Soechtig, Stefan Friedman, says, "It is ironic that people who passionately defend the Second Amendment want to tarnish the rights guaranteed to a filmmaker under the First."
"Stephanie stands by "Under the Gun," and will not stop her work on behalf of victims of gun violence," Friedman added.
Here is a video of Katie Couric examinining the national debate on gun violence with the documentary "Under the Gun":
