TV News Directors Fired Over Pride Memo Awarded $4 Million
A jury found Nexstar violated the former WOOD TV8 directors' privacy rights but rejected their defamation claims.
A federal jury has awarded more than $4 million to Stanton Tang and Amy Fox, two former news directors at Grand Rapids-based NBC affiliate WOOD TV8 who were fired over a memo about Pride Month coverage. The pair sued station owner Nexstar Media Group, alleging they were wrongly portrayed as anti-LGBTQ after the memo was leaked to other media outlets.
The jury awarded Fox $1.8 million for false light invasion of privacy — the dissemination of information that creates a false or misleading impression about a person — plus $500,000 in exemplary damages and $93,000 for Nexstar’s violation of Michigan’s Employee Right to Know Act by sharing employee disciplinary information without first providing written notice.
Tang was awarded $1,290,000 for false light invasion of privacy, $300,000 in exemplary damages, and $93,000 for Nexstar’s violation of the Employee Right to Know Act.
The trial, presided over by U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker of the Western District of Michigan, began on October 6. The jury deliberated into the evening of October 9 before reaching unanimous verdicts on the claims.
However, the jury rejected the pair’s defamation claims.
In June 2023, Tang asked Fox to write a memo about the station’s coverage of Pride Month events, expressing concern that it differed from coverage of events during Women’s History Month or Black History Month.
According to Richard Warren, a Birmingham, Michigan-based attorney representing Nexstar, Tang requested the memo after hearing complaints about the station’s Pride coverage from conservative viewers, including members of his church.
Seeking to address those complaints, the memo directed staff to “discern the newsworthy-ness” of Pride events covered by WOOD TV8 and “consider how to make the story balanced and get both sides of the issue.”
“Fox believed that the Internal Memo would be controversial, was a mistake to send, and even suggested to Tang that they should just hold meetings to discuss Pride coverage in lieu of sending out the Memo,” Warren wrote in a trial brief. “Fox circulated the Internal Memo to the entire newsroom despite her reservations.”
Warren added that the two should have run the memo by Julie Brinks, the station’s general manager.
Once the memo was distributed, many staff members balked, viewing it as an effort to limit Pride Month coverage. Others alleged that the memo required them to “give equal time to hate and discrimination,” according to an anchor’s post on X.
Brinks, who was out of state for a family emergency at the time, told Fox and Tang in emails that the memo did not appear to discriminate against anyone.
But Nexstar’s stance soon changed, according to Fox and Tang, who claimed they were blamed for the fallout after the memo was leaked to other news outlets and drew unfavorable coverage of the station.
The station ultimately fired Fox, Tang, and two other employees in connection with the memo’s circulation.
“According to Fox and Tang, management initially agreed that the memo merely restated corporate policy, but after some colleagues misinterpreted the memo as being anti‑gay — and after the memo was leaked externally — management allegedly shifted its stance and planted news stories that portrayed Fox and Tang as anti‑gay,” Jonker wrote, summarizing the pair’s case in an earlier ruling.
But Nexstar’s communications director denounced the memo as “not consistent with Nexstar’s values, the way we cover the news, or the respect we have for our viewers,” and apologized to the LGBTQ community and the station’s viewers. Nexstar also claimed that Fox and Tang lost the newsroom’s confidence by allowing their personal views to dictate news coverage, according to court records.
Nancy Temple, a Chicago-based attorney representing Fox and Tang, argued that the memo was not as objectionable as some station employees perceived it to be.
“The email did not direct news staff to curb or stop coverage, but called for thoughtful coverage,” she wrote in a trial brief.
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