Morgan Freeman is Threatening to sue CNN
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5 days ago, FTVLive told you that CNN did a story calling out Actor Morgan Freeman for inappropriate conduct.
The problem, as FTVLive pointed out was that CNN let Chloe Melas one of Freeman's accuses and a Reporter at CNN report the story about the 80 year old actor.
On May 25th, FTVLive wrote, "Instead of having Melas tell her story to another Reporter, CNN let her report the story herself."
We certainly took issue with letting a "victim" report her own story for the cable news network.
Now, Freeman is fighting back and says that he is looking at suing CNN for defamation.
Law and Crime reports that on specific example of the harassment — and the core of Freeman’s defamation threat– was detailed by Melas, who said that when she’d interviewed Freeman at a press junket for the movie “Going in Style,” when she was six months pregnant. According to Melas, Freeman held on to her hand after a handshake while, “repeatedly looking her up and down,” as Freeman’s co-stars Alan Arkin and Michael Caine looked on. Freeman reportedly said to Melas, “I wish I was there,” and, “you are ripe.”
Here’s the problem: there are concerns that Melas’ account is not that credible. During interview in question, cameras had been rolling. Freeman was recorded saying, “boy, do I wish I was there,” but there was no photo evidence for any of that “ripe” talk. Further, a letter sent to CNN Tuesday by Freeman’s attorney offers alleged context for the “wish I was there” statement that isn’t remotely inappropriate:
“It is correct that, during the interview, Mr. Freeman said, ‘I wish I was there.’ …Mr. Freeman was in fact responding to a story that Michael Caine had just told.
In that story, Mr. Caine had congratulated a woman on becoming pregnant, only to learn to Mr. Caine’s (and the woman’s) embarrassment that she was not pregnant. When Mr. Freeman said ‘I wish I was there,’ any reasonable viewer would have known that the ‘there’ to which he was referring was the conversation in which Mr. Freeman’s friend, Mr. Caine, had embarrassed himself. That is exactly what Mr. Freeman intended.”
This post with someone that worked with Freeman shows that the CNN Reporter may have been pushing reporting aside for a personal vendetta:
You can read more on this story from Law and Crime, but as we said from the beginning, letting the "victim" also report the story was a bad move by CNN.
Then again, that in it self is becoming quite a common practice.
