Anchor Demands $20 Million Bucks from Charity

A Las Vegas Anchor has demanded $20 million and more from an international charity that he has accused of defrauding him.

KSNV Anchor/Reporter Reed Cowan and the Toronto-based WE Charity, built two schoolhouses under his late son’s name.

After Bloomberg Businessweek published a story that raised ethical questions about WE Charity, Cowan had his lawyer get involved in sending the charity a letter stating “Mr. Cowan’s reputation, livelihood and sacred place were destroyed,” the letter said, adding, if the organization doesn’t agree, it will reach “additional heights of public infamy,” according to the demand letter signed by the Las Vegas law firm Reid Rubinstein & Bogatz.

In a response letter, the charity’s attorneys wrote, “If WE Charity refuses to pay Mr. Cowan nearly a thousand times what he donated, your letter states that he will use his position and connections as a journalist to smear the charity with negative publicity in the United States.”

The Las Vegas Review Journal writes that Cowan, who works for the local Sinclair-owned NBC station, said in an email to the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Wednesday, “Sinclair has nothing to do with my right as a citizen to report wrongs, and seek legal reparation.”

But the case “cruises some ethical lines” and breaches standards set by the Society of Professional Journalists to “avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived,” said Mary Hausch, a former Review-Journal managing editor and UNLV professor who specialized in media ethics.

“I understand him wanting to commemorate his child, but not involving his role as a journalist in doing it,” she said.

Cowan said that he felt forced to hire an attorney after he was stonewalled by the charity and claimed that the demand letter was made public as part of an effort to harm him “for just trying to do the right thing on behalf of good people who gave money fifteen years ago in the wake of the greatest tragedy” of his life.

His 4-year-old son, Wesley, died in a swing set accident back in 2006