CBS News Hit With $20 Million Lawsuit for Report on Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool
For a major news network, reporting the news accurately is supposed to be the bare minimum.
But CBS News is now facing a $20 million lawsuit — just over a year after President Donald Trump successfully settled with the network — over a report that allegedly failed to meet that standard, with a teenager claiming the network falsely implicated him in a high-profile vandalism case.
As Fox News reported, a 15-year-old Maryland boy is suing CBS News for defamation after the network aired footage of him in handcuffs during a report about alleged vandalism at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington, D.C.
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, identifies the teenager only by the initials “JV.”
The problem? The teenager was never accused of vandalizing the Reflecting Pool.
Instead, the lawsuit claimed he was briefly detained by authorities for riding an electric bike near the landmark before being released without charges.
CBS News allegedly used footage of his detention in a June 21 “CBS Evening News” report about arrests related to the alleged vandalism, per Deadline.
During that report, CBS anchor Jericka Duncan told viewers that five people had been arrested, while footage showed the teenager in handcuffs.
The lawsuit argued that the combination of the footage and Duncan’s reporting falsely portrayed the teenager as one of the suspects.
Making matters worse, the lawsuit claimed that while the original television broadcast did not show the teenager’s face, subsequent versions distributed online and through social media did, allowing friends and classmates to identify him.
The complaint also alleged that CBS had access to information distinguishing the teenager’s detention from the vandalism case, but published the footage anyway.
“The facts alleged herein demonstrate that CBS either knew its portrayal of JV was false or acted with reckless disregard for whether it was true,” the lawsuit stated.
The lawsuit claimed the teenager suffered embarrassment, anxiety, emotional distress, and loss of sleep, while some friends distanced themselves from him.
His attorneys also expressed concern that the report could follow him into adulthood, potentially affecting college admissions, athletic opportunities, and future employment.
And the report was hardly confined to a single television broadcast.
The complaint said that CBS’s coverage accumulated at least 1.8 million views across social media platforms, significantly expanding the reach of the alleged misidentification.
CBS eventually issued an on-air correction, but the teenager’s attorneys argued that the acknowledgment came too late to undo the damage.
CBS News declined to comment on the pending litigation to Fox News.
The broader Reflecting Pool controversy has also taken a turn, with a judge permanently dismissing the vandalism case against former Olympic canoeist David Hearn, who had been accused of damaging the landmark following a $14 million renovation.
The allegations against CBS have not been adjudicated, and the lawsuit does not establish that the network committed defamation.
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