Naomi Lebowitz
In March 2026, The Amazing Race contestants Jonathan and Ana Towns sued the show’s producers, claiming they used footage of Jonathan’s on-camera breakdown, which was later linked to an autism diagnosis, to cast him as an abusive villain.[1] Three months later, Tyra Banks sued Netflix over Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model, alleging that producers compressed a three-and-a-half-hour interview into roughly sixteen minutes to make it appear as if she brushed off a contestant’s report of sexual assault.[2] Both cases raise a question of suppression: not simply what the broadcast left out, but what the producers had, knew, and deliberately buried. That distinction deserves greater weight in actual-malice analysis.
A. The Doctrine as It Stands
Defamation by implication fills the gap between literal truth and the impression a viewer takes away. A broadcast may still be actionable even when every individual clip is true if the arrangement of true clips creates a substantially false impression.[3] Since Banks is a public figure, and the Townses chose to compete on a nationally broadcast show, they will likely qualify as limited-purpose public figures,[4] and must prove actual malice, the constitutionally required showing of knowing or reckless falsity.[5]
In Huckabee v. Time Warner Entertainment Co., the Texas Supreme Court explained that an omission may serve as evidence of actual malice only when it is so glaring that a factfinder could infer the broadcaster knew, or at least suspected, it would create a false impression.[6] By contrast, a mere failure to capture every detail of a story is treated as an editorial misjudgment—not malice. Fox Entertainment Group, Inc. v. Abdel-Hafiz reinforced that burden: the plaintiff must show the publisher knew or strongly suspected its choice would create a substantially false impression.[7]
That framework addresses editorial decisions involving incomplete context, such as a producer who didn’t ask the right follow-up question or get their desired exculpatory shot. It was not built for a producer who has the footage, understands exactly what it shows, and cuts it anyway.
B. Suppression Is Not Omission
Both complaints allege that the producers knew what their footage showed. The Towns’ complaint alleges that producers made a deliberate editorial determination not to attend to Jonathan’s mental well-being during his on-camera breakdown to preserve a negative narrative focus on him.[8] Banks’s complaint goes further, alleging that the defendants possessed the full interview, understood it contradicted the impression the docuseries created, and chose to suppress it.[9] If credited, Banks’s allegations map cleanly onto Huckabee’s “knew, or at least suspected” standard for actual malice.
That conduct is suppression, not omission. The closest Supreme Court analogy is Masson v. New Yorker Magazine, Inc., which held that deliberately altering a speaker’s words can establish actual malice when the alteration materially changes the meaning the speaker conveyed.[10] Masson involved a print quotation, but suppressing footage that changes a story’s meaning is simply the video-editing version of altering a quotation.[11] Courts should treat deliberate suppression of known, materially contradictory footage as powerful evidence of actual malice rather than as an ordinary editorial gap.[12]
C. Why Discovery Is the Real Battleground
The suppression theory depends on plaintiffs’ ability to obtain the footage and related editorial evidence, and Herbert v. Lando provides a basis for seeking that discovery.[13] A producer cannot hide behind “editorial discretion” as a reason to avoid explaining, under oath, why specific footage was cut.[14] Herbert may be nearly fifty years old, but Towns and Banks will soon test whether it still has teeth.
D. The Stake
Producers can lean on substantial truth, because no single clip, viewed alone, is false.[15] Towns and Banks could unsettle that defense. If they do, the effects will reach past the courtroom. Producers and the streaming platforms that distribute their work will have to treat raw footage and edit records as evidence and justify every cut that changes what a subject said or meant. Companies that preserve full interviews and document their editing decisions will be ready for that scrutiny; those that cannot explain what they left out will not. A rule treating suppression as evidence of actual malice would not require rewriting defamation law. It would enforce a distinction the doctrine already draws and then declines to police: the difference between a producer who missed something, and a producer who saw it and cut it anyway.
[1] Dominic Patten, The Amazing Case: Paramount, Bruckheimer & Disney Hit With $8M Defamation Suit By ‘Amazing Race’ Contestants Jonathan Towns & Ana Towns, DEADLINE (Mar. 5, 2026, 10:03 AM), https://deadline.com/2026/03/amazing-race-lawsuit-defamation-towns-1236744917/.
[2] Associated Press, Tyra Banks sues Netflix over 'America's Next Top Model' documentary, alleging defamation, PBS NEWSHOUR (June 15, 2026, 4:11 PM), https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/tyra-banks-sues-netflix-over-americas-next-top-model-documentary-alleging-defamation.
[3] Turner v. KTRK Television, Inc., 38 S.W.3d 103, 115 (Tex. 2000).
[4] See Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323, 345, 351 (1974).
[5]New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 279-80 (1964) (holding that public officials suing for defamation must prove the defendant acted with “knowledge that [the defamatory statement] was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not”).
[6] Huckabee v. Time Warner Ent. Co., 19 S.W.3d 413, 426 (Tex. 2000).
[7] Fox Ent. Grp., Inc. v. Abdel-Hafiz, 240 S.W.3d 524, 563 (Tex. App. 2007).
[8] See Complaint ¶¶ 2-3, Towns v. Worldrace Prods., Inc., No. 26STCV07157, (Cal. Super. Ct. Los Angeles Cnty, Mar. 4, 2026), https://trellis.law/doc/276327687/complaint-filed-by-jonathan-russell-towns-plaintiff-ana-rivera-towns-plaintiff-as-to-worldrace-productions-inc-defendant-paramount-global-defendant-cbs-broadcasting-inc-defendant-et-al.
[9] See Complaint ¶¶ 200, 212, Banks v. Netflix Worldwide Ent. LLC, No. 2:26-cv-06467 (C.D. Cal. June 13, 2026), https://assets.alm.com/a8/8e/90074cca4fd7a9fd2ec61a626081/tyra-banks-v-netflix-complaint.pdf.
[10] Masson v. New Yorker Mag., Inc., 501 U.S. 496, 517 (1991).
[11] Id. at 499.
[12] Huckabee, 19 S.W.3d at 426.
[13] Herbert v. Lando, 441 U.S. 153, 175 (1979) (holding that the First Amendment does not shield a broadcaster’s editorial process, including what a producer knew about footage that never aired, from discovery once a defamation plaintiff has stated a claim).
[14] Id. at 160, 170-75.
[15] Masson, 501 U.S. at 516-17.