The Virginia Citizens Defense League, a non-profit group dedicated to protecting gun owners’ rights to bear arms, has filed a $12 million lawsuit against Katie Couric and the producers of a 2016 documentary on gun violence.
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Breitbart News previously reported that an eight-second pause was inserted in the film between the end of Couric’s question about gun control and the responses offered by VCDL members.
The segment in “Under the Gun” shows almost 10 seconds of silence after Couric asks members of the Virginia Citizens Defense League how felons or terrorists could be prevented from purchasing a gun without background checks.
In the filing, the VCDL, Daniel L. Hawes, Esq., and Patricia Webb allege that the filmmakers knowingly and maliciously manufactured the fictional exchange by splicing in footage that the filmmakers took surreptitiously after telling the interviewees to be silent for ten seconds so that recording equipment could be calibrated.
They also allege that the filmmakers manipulated the lighting to make them look sinister.
Couric’s spokesman didn’t immediately respond Tuesday. “First, the exchange prejudices the Virginia Citizens Defense League in its trade as a pro-Second Amendment advocacy organization”. We want to set the record straight and hold them accountable for what they’ve done.
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The VCDL asserts that Soechtig, the film’s director, operated with an “agenda” and that “although the Defendants knew that their intentional edits were misleading and misrepresented Couric’s exchange with the VCDL, they refused to remove the manipulated footage or to present the footage of what had actually taken place”. The lawsuit is against filmmaker Katie Couric and her colleagues for depicting the former in a poor light in the recently released documentary entitled, “Under the Gun”. “When I screened an early version of the film with the director, Stephanie Soechtig, I questioned her and the editor about the pause and was told that a “beat” was added for, as she described it, “dramatic effect”, to give the audience a moment to consider the question”. The case was filed in the United States District Court in Richmond.
