A former Nexstar Media Group news director who is suing the company for defamation says a controversial memo he orchestrated that led to his dismissal was “spot on.”
In a court filing earlier this month, former WOOD-TV (Channel 8) News Director Stanton Tang said the memo that urged employees to pull back on coverage of Michigan’s Pride Month events was an “internal communiqué” that was consistent with Nexstar’s standards and practices, and was never meant to be leaked to the public.
The memo, written by the station’s assistant news director Amy Fox, reminded newsroom employees that WOOD-TV’s broadcast region is “a Conservative area in many ways” and encouraged staffers to “recognize that some stories related to LGBTQ issues are going to be controversial and polarizing in our community.”
“While you personally may not agree with a certain position, people are entitled to their opinions, and they are our viewers,” Fox wrote at Tang’s urging.
The memo was leaked to several news outlets, including The Desk, which wrote the first publicly-available news story on the matter. It was earlier reported by the trade publication FTV Live in a story that was paywalled on Patreon.
The station’s employees revolted over the memo, with several producers and reporters issuing public comments about the matter affirming their determination to continue covering Pride Month events in spite of the guidance.
A Nexstar spokesperson later told CNN that the memo was not consistent with the company’s values, and that the broadcaster “will take appropriate action as necessary to address this situation.” Tang and Fox were later fired, as were two employees suspected of leaking the memo to news outlets.
Related: Embattled Nexstar news director threatened journalists who voted
Tang, who now works at a Christian-oriented radio station, filed his awsuit against Nexstar in June, saying the company defamed him in public by claiming his actions were inconsistent with the company’s standard operating procedures and saying Nexstar executives defamed him in public comments to reporters at other news organizations that covered the memo.
In July, attorneys for Nexstar filed a motion to dismiss the case, saying most of Tang’s allegations over what happened had nothing to do with the broadcaster because the company did not directly influence “news stories describing him as anti-gay or a racist, accusing him of discriminating against gay individuals, or otherwise attributing unsavory characteristics to him.”
“Instead, Plaintiff’s Complaint attributes that to TheDesk.net,” Nexstar attorneys said, continuing that “TheDesk.net…is not owned or operated by Nexstar.” The Desk and its parent company, Solano Media, are not parties to the lawsuit.
“It is clear from [Tang’s] complaint that all of the reputational damage he claims to have suffered arises from third-party statements that both specifically name him and describe him as anti-gay, not from statements made by Nexstar,” the broadcaster’s attorneys assert.
Related: Nexstar executive scolds employees for leaking Pride Month memo
Earlier this month, Tang’s attorneys responded to Nexstar’s motion, saying the company was responsible for influencing news reports on their leak because of their status as the largest local TV broadcaster in the country. That status meant anything communicated by Nexstar executives to the press “came with a level of credibility, and they implied that [Tang] had engaged in and he was ultimately fired for engaging in misconduct.”
That couldn’t be further from the truth, Tang’s attorneys say, because he was simply doing his job when he ordered Fox to remind WOOD-TV employees to be mindful of their viewers and demure in their decisions to cover Pride Month events.
“The internal memo was not misconduct; it was spot on,” the attorneys wrote. “As the Complaint asserts, it was an internal communiqué in which the news editor was reminding his news reporting staff to consider the newsworthiness of particular stories – a directive precisely in line with the Nexstar Standards Guide and his specifically defined role as news director.”
Tang could have issued memos about any number of topics during his time as WOOD-TV’s news director, and those communications would have fallen in line with his duties, his attorneys wrote. This one just happened to be about Pride Month, and “once it was made public, the potential for its contents to be taken out of context, misquoted and/or misrepresented — and the consequent harm to [Tang’s] professional reputation — grew from hour to hour, and from day to day.”
As they put it, rather than trying to smother the firestorm of controversy by defending Tang, they stoked the flames further by throwing him and Fox under the bus. Fox has filed her own defamation lawsuit that is separate from Tang’s but which makes many of the same claims of defamation and wrongful termination. Both cases are still pending in court.
Documents associated with Tang’s case show that the federal court overseeing the matter has decided to have the motion to dismiss evaluated by a panel of three judges, with a hearing to determine the matter occurring at some point between now and next April.
