Back in May, Stephen Gutowski at the Washington Free Beacon broke the story that Katie Couric’s gun-control “documentary,” Under the Gun, used deceptive editing to concoct the following exchange between Couric and members of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, a gun rights group:
Well, look at that. Couric asked a substantive question, and it shut those gun nuts right the hell up. They were just looking around like, “Uh-duhhhhhh, we dunno, Katie. Ya got us there.” Boom!
Except that’s not what happened at all. Unfortunately for Couric, these folks were recording the interview as well. Here’s the full audio of Couric’s question and their immediate response:
Hmm. That’s not nearly as much fun, is it? Facts are boring! Plus, this makes Couric sound unprepared, not the people who aren’t as liberal as she is.
Couric issued a weak, dishonest non-apology for this brazen journalistic malpractice, and that was the end of it until today. Gutowski now follows up with this news:
The Virginia gun rights group whose members were deceptively portrayed in Katie Couric’s documentary Under the Gun filed a $12 million defamation lawsuit against the Yahoo News anchor on Tuesday.
The Virginia Citizens Defense League filed the suit in federal court against Couric, as well as the documentary’s director Stephanie Soechtig, Atlas Films, and the cable channel Epix…
Libby Locke, the group’s lawyer, called Couric and Soechtig “manipulators” and accused them of misleading members about how they’d be portrayed in the film.
“They manipulated the footage to manufacture a fictional exchange that never happened,” she said. “And, worst of all, they manipulated their own audience into believing that the VCDL members had been stumped by this Katie Couric question. This lawsuit is really the only way to hold Katie Couric and Stephanie Soechtig accountable for their misleading journalism.”
Katie has learned a valuable lesson. It’s the same lesson her good pal Hillary is grappling with right now: In 2016, everybody with a smartphone is part of the media. When you tell a lie — such as “Katie stunned those gun nuts into silence” or “Hillary left the event early, but she feels fine” — be prepared for someone to produce hard evidence that you’re lying.
Twelve million bucks sounds like a fair sum. I hope they get every penny. I hope they make Couric the next Gawker. It’s the only way to get through to liberals that it’s not okay to lie about people just because they understand the United States Constitution.