Under The Gun, the Katie Couric-produced gun violence documentary widely criticized for deceptive editing, will not be revised to remove a scene that misleadingly portrays gun rights activists as idiots, Couric said Thursday.
Couric had previously described the scene “misleading” because it does “not accurately represent [the] response” of the activists she interviewed for the documentary.
Couric said Thursday that, while she “didn’t feel comfortable” with the editing in the scene and could “understand the objection” of critics, no changes would be made to the film.
“I think we have to focus on the big issue of gun violence,” Couric said at a Power Women Breakfast in New York hosted by TheWrap. “It was my hope that, when I approached this topic, that this would be a conversation starter.”
Buried at toward the end of TheWrap‘s own writeup of the event is the following sentence: “Couric said the documentary will not be re-done to fix the edit.”
The scene in Under The Gun that has generated the most controversy features an interview with gun rights activists in Virginia, and includes a long pause after Couric asks a question about how to prevent terrorists and felons from purchasing guns. An audio recording of the full interview shows that there was no such pause, that the activists answered the question immediately and coherently.
Under The Gun‘s director, Couric pal Stephanie Soechtig, has defended the misleading pause as an artistic device intended to allow viewers “to consider this important question.” Soechtig added that she “never intended to make anyone look bad.”
