Virginians Citizens Defense League (VCDL) has filed a $12 million defamation lawsuit against Katie Couric and director Stephanie Soechtig for their role in the “misleading” edits that made VCDL members appear stumped by Couric’s gun control questions in her documentary Under the Gun.
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 pause made the VCDL members look like Couric had baffled them with her gun control insight. In truth, the VCDL members had answered Couric immediately.
Raw audio obtained by the Washington Free Beacon proved the immediacy of the VCDL’s answers, but once the edits were made, the film portrayed the members as speechless:
Couric later apologized for the “misleading” edits.
CBS 6 now reports that the VCDL has filed a defamation suit. VCDL president Philip Van Cleave said:
“We were horrified to see how Couric and her team manipulated us and the video footage to make us look like fools who didn’t stand up for the Second Amendment. We want to set the record straight and hold them accountable for what they’ve done. You shouldn’t intentionally misrepresent someone’s views just because you disagree with them.”
The suit alleges that Couric and Soechtig “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.”
AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.