A week before election, judge asks court to block critical TV story she says is untrue
An increasingly contentious local court race boiled over onto new ground Tuesday when a Mecklenburg County judge went to court to block a story that she believes will cause “irreparable harm” to her re-election.
Attorneys for District Judge Aretha Blake said a story planned by WBTV investigative reporter Nick Ochsner on Blake is inaccurate and defamatory. In an extraordinary move, they asked Superior Court Judge Daniel Kuehnert to issue a temporary restraining order blocking publication. The planned story focuses on Blake’s two years in Family Court.
The motion for the restraining order is part of a lawsuit Blake filed Tuesday against Ochsner, WBTV and Gray Media Group, alleging libel and slander.
Ochsner’s attorney Jonathan Buchan said what Blake wants is effectively unprecedented in U.S. legal history: a court order to block a citizen from saying something before they say it.
“They do that in other countries. They don’t do that here,” Buchan, who often represents the Observer, told Kuehnert.
“We have the First Amendment. I don’t want to live in those other places. I want to live here.”
No decision was reached Tuesday night. Kuehnert reconvened the hearing for 3:30 p.m. Wednesday.
Media coverage of Blake’s first term on the District Court bench has roiled her reelection campaign against Charlotte attorney Lynna Moen. The fight over media coverage comes a week before Tuesday’s Democratic primary.
In a story earlier this month, Ochsner claimed that Blake had 52 Family Court cases dating back to 2017 in which she still had not ruled. According to Ochsner, a follow-up story planned for later this week sets the number at 35 cases from 2017-18 that Blake has not ruled on. Buchan said the planned story came from additional reporting.
Both stories, according to Blake’s Charlotte attorney Walter Bowers, are “demonstrably false,” and he says that courthouse officials had told Ochsner his earlier story was incorrect but he published it anyway.
“At the time of publication of the news story, the defendants knew that the statements in the in the news story were false or acted with reckless disregard to whether the statements in the news story were false,” Blake’s lawsuit says.
Bowers told Kuehnert that Ochsner published his story before having all the facts and caused “irreparable harm” to Blake.
Alluding to Buchan’s comments, he said, “I also would not want to live in a country that does not protect its election process.”
Buchan acknowledged WBTV’s reporting could hurt Blake’s re-election chances and her professional reputation. “But that happens with all news stories about elected officials particularly around election time,” he said.
To limit publication, he argued, would clearly violate the U.S. Constitution.
Kuehnert, of Burke County, declined to make a decision Tuesday night, saying he needed to read the arguments of both sides. He said he was “pretty partial to the First Amendment, and I’m also partial to free and fair elections.
“I’m also partial to the truth.”
This story was originally published February 25, 2020 at 6:56 PM with the headline "A week before election, judge asks court to block critical TV story she says is untrue."
