Chicago- A former NBA player filed a lawsuit Thursday against the Chicago Tribune and other media outlets over inaccurate reports in August that linked him to a sex crime in Florida.
Eddie Johnson, a Chicago native and former University of Illinois star who played 18 years in the NBA, works as a Phoenix Suns TV analyst. He was on vacation in Hawaii at the time and had nothing to do with the alleged assault on an 8-year-old girl in Ocala, Fla.
The suspect arrested in the case was a man also named Eddie Johnson, who also is a former NBA player.
An Associated Press story on Aug. 8 correctly identified the suspect as the former Atlanta Hawks player who attended Auburn University.
But a Tribune story on Aug. 9 mistakenly identified the suspect as the Eddie Johnson who had starred at the University of Illinois.
The lawsuit alleges that the Tribune published the story with reckless disregard for whether it was true.
“It is a most foul libel indeed to be falsely accused of being a child molester,” the lawsuit said.
The day after the Tribune story appeared, Dan McGrath, the paper’s associate managing editor/sports, apologized for the “inadvertent but hurtful error” that he said occurred in the rush to meet deadlines.
“For the record, Chicago’s Eddie Johnson remains extensively involved in charity work, including motivational speaking and basketball clinics for kids,” McGrath wrote. “He was and is regarded as one of the NBA’s model citizens.”
Paulette Dodson, a Tribune attorney, said Thursday that McGrath’s article already had expressed the newspaper’s regret over the incident.
“Clearly, there was no malice on our part,” Dodson said. “We plan to defend ourselves fully against the lawsuit.”
The lawsuit also accuses other media outlets of similar mistakes.
According to the lawsuit, sports commentator and former Tribune columnist Skip Bayless mistook the Suns’ TV analyst for the Florida suspect while appearing on radio on “The Jim Rome Show.”
Bayless and Clear Channel Communications, which the suit identified as the owner of the program, could not be reached Thursday for comment.