Actress Elisha Cuthbert demanded an apology from Canadian TV station TSN after it aired a report saying that the actress was allegedly cheating on her husband, NHL star Dion Phaneuf.
Inquistr reported that TSN featured a tweet that it seemed to find funny. The tweet mentioned that Cuthbert was "tangoing between the sheets" with Phaneuf's Toronto Maple Leafs teammate, Joffrey Lupul.
The tweet was immediately announced to be purely false but the damage had already been done by TSN. It appears that the tweet has been taken down as of this writing. Lupul resorted to Twitter and posted that TSN was a "poor man's TMZ".
Yahoo! Sports reported that Cuthbert, Phaneuf and Lupul later threatened to sue TSN for their wrong report. Gall Legge Grant & Munroe LLP, the law firm representing them released a statement and demanded from the network a formal apology and a huge amount in damages for the defamatory tweet during the show. The same demand was forwarded to someone named Anthony Adragna, a Maple Leafs fan who wrote the tweet.
A part of the statement reads, "It is bad enough that there are people who spend their time using social media to publish such false and malicious stories, but it is made much worse when a reputable media outlet like TSN gives broad circulation and credibility to these false stories by republishing them as TSN did. If TSN and Mr. Adragna do not immediately comply with the demands set out in our letters, we have instructions from our clients to immediately commence a lawsuit against them. Our clients will not be discussing this matter with the media."
Adragna, however, seemed unapologetic about the matter. He tweeted after, "What's all this crap about a lawsuit. If anyone is getting sued it's TSN for being negligent not me." A little earlier, he tweeted, "I guess i pissed off lupul... woops my bad man, not my fault TSN failed to their job right."
The public relations department of TSN tweeted that the network indeed posted an inappropriate and disrespectful tweet on air. The network stated that they have already reached out to the Toronto Maple Leafs organization and all others affected to forward their sincerest apologies for their mistake.
On Tuesday night, March 3, TSN aired an public apology during SportsCenter while the Maple Leafs were playing against the Florida Panthers. James Duthie, lead anchor of the network, delivered the message.
"Yesterday when TSN was reporting on the NHL trade deadline it displayed a scrolling ticker of tweets from the public. In spite of TSN's protocols to prevent unfounded and inappropriate tweets from making it to air, a false, and inappropriate tweet was allowed to run. There was no basis for the false allegation made in this tweet. TSN unreservedly apologizes to Joffrey Lupul, Dion Phaneuf and Elisha Cuthbert and regrets any embarrassment this unfortunate incident has caused to them."