A federal jury in Grand Rapids has ordered Nexstar Media Group to pay $4 million to two former WOOD-TV news managers who said the company falsely portrayed them as anti-LGBTQ after a leaked internal memo blew up into a national controversy. Jurors reached verdicts for both Stanton Tang and Amy Fox.
Tang, the station's former news director, and Fox, the former assistant news director, sued Nexstar Media Group after claiming they were wrongly cast as bigots over their roles in a June 2023 memo about the Grand Rapids NBC affiliate's Pride Month coverage, according to MLive.com. The jury rejected their defamation claims outright but found in their favor on false light invasion of privacy, the outlet reports. Fox and Tang received a combined $4 million.
How a Pride Month Memo Blew Up Into a Firing Spree
The dispute traces back to June 2023, when Tang asked Fox to draft guidance on how WOOD-TV should cover Pride Month events, according to MLive.com. Tang was reportedly concerned about alienating conservative viewers in West Michigan. The internal memo, sent June 13, 2023, instructed journalists to evaluate the newsworthiness of Pride Month events and get both sides of the issue, citing pushback from conservative viewers, according to the Detroit Metro Times. Court records cited by MLive.com say the memo also raised concerns that Pride coverage differed from how the station handled Women's History Month or Black History Month.
Station staff viewed the memo as an effort to limit the number of Pride Month stories, and the backlash was swift. Tang and Fox were among four workers ultimately fired, the outlet reports. Per TheDesk.net, Nexstar also terminated executive producers Luke Stier and Madeline Odle, accusing them of leaking details of the memo to outside media outlets; Stier had publicly posted on social media that newsroom staff refused to comply with the directive before his dismissal.
Competing Accounts of Who Knew What
WOOD-TV general manager Julie Brinks told Fox and Tang at the time that the memo did not appear to discriminate against anyone, according to MLive.com. But Nexstar's communications director publicly said the memo was inconsistent with the company's values, news coverage, and respect for viewers, and the company apologized to the LGBTQ community and its viewers while saying the news directors had lost the newsroom's confidence and let personal views dictate coverage, the outlet reports.
Attorney Nancy Temple, who represented Fox and Tang out of Chicago, wrote that the original email called for thoughtful coverage and did not direct news staff to curb or stop coverage, according to MLive.com. Nexstar's attorney, Richard Warren of Birmingham, Michigan, countered that Tang asked Fox to write the memo after complaints about Pride coverage from conservative viewers, including members of Tang's own church, MLive.com reports.
The Legal Theory That Got the Case to a Jury
The case almost didn't reach trial on the theory jurors ultimately embraced. In March, U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker dismissed Tang's claim for defamation per se, ruling that Michigan law restricts per se defamation to narrow statutory categories that didn't cover corporate statements about employee firings, according to TheDesk.net. But the same month, Jonker denied most of Nexstar's motion for summary judgment on the remaining claims, ruling that under Michigan law, literally true statements can imply a false and defamatory idea, as reported by Reason Magazine.
That ruling sent the case to trial on claims including defamation by implication and false light invasion of privacy. Section 6 of Michigan's Bullard-Plawecki Employee Right to Know Act bars employers from disclosing disciplinary actions to third parties without first sending written notice to the affected employee by first-class mail on or before the day of disclosure, per the statute's text on file with the Michigan Legislature. The 1978 law contains only limited exceptions, such as court orders or formal government investigations.
Discovery Reached Into National Media Coverage
Evidence at trial reportedly drew on how Nexstar's public statements to national outlets after the memo leaked became central to the plaintiffs' case. In May 2025, CNN media reporter Liam Reilly was subpoenaed over June 2023 email exchanges with Nexstar Chief Communications Officer Gary Weitman, whose public comments on the company's behalf served as key evidence in the false-light claims; Reilly was deposed in July, according to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.
The plaintiffs argued they were following standard company practice rather than acting on personal bias. They also argued corporate executives scapegoated them to manage a national public relations backlash.
A Case Years in the Making Finally Goes to Verdict
The path to trial stretched across more than two years of litigation. Settlement talks held before U.S. Magistrate Judge Ray Kent collapsed without agreement in June, leading Judge Jonker to schedule a compressed trial format running daily from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. without a lunch recess, according to TheDesk.net.
Nexstar Media Group was the defendant in the case. WOOD-TV, the Grand Rapids NBC affiliate at the center of the case, serves the West Michigan market covering Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Battle Creek, and shares operations with sister stations WOTV and WXSP-CD.
