Our friends at the Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL) yesterday announced that they have filed a $12 million lawsuit for defamation in Federal District Court in Richmond, Virginia against Katie Couric, director Stephanie Soechtig, Atlas Films, and Studio 3 Partners LLC d/b/a Epix and other responsible parties for the film “Under the Gun”.
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“It looked like we were either ashamed or didn’t have an answer, when really we were fine and had some really well articulated answers, never made it”, VCDL president Philip Van Cleave said this past spring.
“We want to set the record straight and hold them accountable for what they’ve done”. Instead of portraying the VCDL members’ immediate answers to Couric’s question during the 2015 interview at a Tysons Corner hotel, the suit claims, the question was followed by roughly nine seconds of footage of the interviewees appearing to be at a loss for words.
An unedited audio recording of the interview reveals that-contrary to the portrayal in the film-the VCDL members had immediately begun responding to Couric’s question.
The VCDL slammed Couric in May over the documentary’s editing, calling the journalist’s work on the film “deliberate deception” in a Facebook post, and released an unedited audiotape of the group’s session. “And, worst of all, they manipulated their own audience into believing that the VCDL members had been stumped by this Katie Couric question”. Epic saw the Sundance screening and acquired the documentary at that time.
“Under the Gun”, a new gun documentary produced by Katie Couric. “The network had no role in its creation or production and should therefore not be a party to this lawsuit”.
In its filing, the group alleges that the filmmakers “knowingly and maliciously manufactured the fictional exchange” by slicing in footage taken surreptitiously after telling the interviewees to remain silent for 10 seconds so that recording equipment could be calibrated.
Director Soechtig admitted to The Washington Post that the pause was added, but she said it was to help viewers consider the question being asked.
In response to the lawsuit, a spokesperson for Soechtig, Stefan Friedman, said in a statement: “It’s ironic that people who so passionately defend the Second Amendment want to trample the rights guaranteed to a filmmaker under the First”. She said in a message on the film’s website in May that she regrets that the edit was misleading and that she didn’t raise her initial concerns about the segment “more vigorously”.
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“I take responsibility for a decision that misrepresented an exchange I had with members of the Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL)”, Couric wrote.
