Jacobson sues Channel 2, "Humiliation"

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: Jacobson sues Channel 2 : Ousted Ch. 5 reporter alleges 'humiliation' : It took a year, but Amy Jacobson has gone from swimsuit to lawsuit. : The former WMAQ-Ch. 5 reporter is seeking more than $1 million in damages from WBBM-Ch. 2 parent CBS, Channel 2 boss Joe Ahern and others, complaining that a tape it aired of her in bathing attire at the home of a potential news source in July 2007 subjected Jacobson to "enormous public humiliation and disgrace." : Jacobson wound up losing her TV job and, eventually, her home, according to the suit filed Monday in Cook County by attorney Kathleen Zellner on behalf of Jacobson, husband Jaime Anglada and their two children, all of whom alleged to have "suffered from observing the devastating effects on the person they love most." : Jacobson's suit, which states "some would say" she was "the best in the business" before the July 5, 2007, incident was recorded by Channel 2, alleges the station never should have shot the video, should never have aired it and should not have edited it the way it did. : The suit asserts Channel 2 portrayed her as "an adulteress and disreputable reporter" and said the station leaked word of the tape to newspapers, leading to published reports it used to justify airing the video. : Jacobson has said she originally intended to take her kids swimming at Chicago's East Bank Club before she detoured to the Plainfield home of Craig Stebic, whose wife had vanished two months earlier and remains missing to this day, at the invitation of Stebic's sister. : "CBS2 stands by its reporting," a WBBM spokeswoman said in a statement. "Ms. Jacobson's claims have no merit, and we look forward to vigorously defending ourselves in court." : Jacobson did not return a call for comment Monday night, and Zellner's office said the attorney was unavailable. NBC-owned WMAQ, Jacobson's ex-employer, declined to comment. : Whatever journalistic splash Jacobson had hoped to make by Stebic's pool by ingratiating herself with potential sources instead resulted in the self-inflicted sting of a belly flop, reported everywhere from England to Australia. Even Geraldo Rivera weighed in, decrying her ethics and calling her dismissal "a no-brainer" on Fox News Channel. : Jacobson's lawsuit cites an episode of NBC's "Law & Order" in which Lara Flynn Boyle played an ambitious reporter having an affair with a murder suspect. Apart from Boyle wearing a swimsuit and towel similar to Jacobson's, the episode's premise was far removed from anything that happened in Plainfield. : Zellner told the Chicago Tribune last year that before Channel 2 aired the tape, she had called the station to ask about the tape's status. She said she was concerned about what people might have been saying about what was on the unseen tape, already the talk of Chicago's TV newsrooms. : "I just heard some distortions of it," Zellner said. "No one was sitting in a hot tub. She wasn't anywhere near [Stebic]." ." : Sources told the Chicago Tribune last year that Jacobson's decision to brief police on her interaction with Stebic, without telling her WMAQ bosses, played a role in her ouster. That breach of standards, which made her a part of a story she was covering, one she had been warned she was getting too close to, was just the latest incident to cause bosses to lose their confidence in Jacobson's judgment, the sources said. : While one Chicago TV executive at the time called Jacobson's misstep "egregious," another said she might have survived it had it not been for an accumulation of incidents. : : (Rosenthal)

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