A federal judge overseeing a defamation case brought against Nexstar Media Group by two former news managers will be allowed to proceed for the time being.
In a three-page order issued on Tuesday, Judge Robert Jonker denied Nexstar’s motions to dismiss, saying former WOOD-TV (Channel 8, NBC) News Director Stanton Tang and his assistant news director, Amy Fox, had met certain legal burdens in order to move forward with separate but related defamation cases against the broadcaster.
Tang and Fox lost their jobs last year after orchestrating and distribution a memo that was viewed as critical of the station’s coverage of Pride Month events in the greater Grand Rapids area. The memo reminded newsroom employees that WOOD-TV’s viewership consisted of people who identify politically as Conservative, and encouraged them to better weigh whether an event was worth covering.
“If we are covering Pride events, we need to consider how to make the story balanced and get both sides of the issue,” the memo said.
The reminder drew strong criticism and condemnation within WOOD-TV’s newsroom, with employees vowing not to follow it. A copy leaked to news outlets, including The Desk, which was the first to publish a publicly-available story on the matter.
Tang later affirmed he directed Fox to write and distribute the memo to employees. Nexstar initiated an internal investigation, which ultimately led to both news directors being fired. Two other employees were also dismissed.
In June, Tang and Fox each filed defamation lawsuits against Nexstar. While the cases are separate, they contain similar allegations against Nexstar, with both saying the company wrongly accused them of distributing a memo that was not in line with the broadcaster’s standards.
The memo was well within the scope of their managerial duties, they assert, and comments made by a Nexstar spokesperson and other executives ultimately led to unflattering news reports in the media, which they claim was damaging to their reputations.
Related: Fired news director says Pride Month memo was “spot on”
Nexstar acknowledges that it made a few statements in response to the memo — including one that affirmed the broadcaster’s commitment to “diversity, equity and inclusion,” and which characterized the newsroom note as “not consistent with Nexstar’s values” — but said Tang can’t sue based on those statements because none of the company’s executives ever mentioned him by name, “nor do they convey or imply any negative characteristics about him.”
“They do not accuse him of committing a crime, an act of dishonesty, or immoral conduct,” Nexstar’s attorneys said in their motion to dismiss. “None of these statements accuse plaintiff of being anti-gay, or of engaging in discrimination. A casual reader or member of the public reading these statements would see neither a reference to [Tang], nor anything attributing poor or unsavory qualities about him.”
On Tuesday, Judge Jonker largely rejected those assertions, saying the law required him to “construe the complaint in the light most favorable to the plaintiff[s], accept the factual allegations as true, and draw all reasonable inferences in favor of the plaintiff[s].”
Jonker said the allegations made by Tang and Fox seem to indicate that “two respected and skilled professionals working in news management lost their jobs in the wake of an internal and external dispute over a memorandum that they say was non-discriminatory and consistent with company policy, but that many inside and outside of the company interpreted as anti-gay.”
“That, in turn, led to controversy internally and externally,” the judge wrote.
According to Tang and Fox — and accepted at this stage by the judge as correct — management at Nexstar were “initially supportive of the memo,” only to change course “once the external dispute exploded” in the press.
Taken as a whole, the allegations support the idea that Nexstar “promoted a false picture that destroyed [Tang’s] reputation in an effort to preserve [its] own.”
While the cases are being heard separately, the judge’s order denying Nexstar’s motion to dismiss applied equally to both cases. The order cautioned that the allegations made in each complaint don’t necessarily reflect how things actually played out in the real world — only that the allegations and the evidence presented to the court at this stage requires him to side with the former news executives over the broadcaster when it comes to deciding whether the case will proceed at this stage.
For now, it will, but Jonker wrote that a review of pre-trial evidence exchanged during the discovery phase of the case might ultimately cause Tang and Fox’s story of what happened to fall apart.
Nexstar can move for summary judgment at a later date, the judge said, referirng to the tactic as a “Rule 56.” That rule allows either party to request that the court issue an immediate order in their favor based on the facts alleged, the evidence disclosed, precedent cases and the law.
