I have to admit, I used to have a good deal of respect for Nancy Grace until finding out that she's been harshly criticized for her practices while she was a prosecutor in Atlanta. That being said, however, we should be very concerned about a wrongful-death suit pending against her by the family of Melinda Duckett.
A federal judge has refused to dismiss a lawsuit that claims CNN's Nancy Grace pushed the mother of a missing toddler to suicide through aggressive questioning.
CNN and Grace argued the wrongful death lawsuit brought by Melinda Duckett's family would "severely chill" journalists' coverage of missing-persons cases. But U.S. District Judge William Terrell Hodges on Thursday denied their motion to dismiss the lawsuit.
CNN was added to the suit because the family claims airing the interview after Duckett's death traumatized them. Let's be honest--the network displayed dreadful judgement in airing the interview so soon after her death. At the same time, if the family wins, it could have terrible consequences in the long run--and not just for missing-persons cases either.
From my perspective as a journalism major, it seems to me that the only reason this suit is going anywhere is because the Ducketts are private persons, and private persons have much more latitude to sue the media. That's because in looking at the family's complaint at The Smoking Gun, there's really nothing there.
The suit alleges that Grace intended all along to "verbally assault and harass" Duckett. Come on now ... has it occurred to anyone that maybe, just maybe, Grace and her producers found out about some inconsistencies in Duckett's story after they agreed to the interview? Any reporter who knows this and sits on it isn't doing his or her job. And besides, Duckett had the right to end the interview at any time.
Think about this, folks. What this suit would essentially say if the Ducketts won is that aggressive questioning causes someone to get fired or held up for well-deserved public ridicule, you're liable to get sued. time I checked, that's what we want to happen to wrongdoers--even if they're private persons.