6/10 – A federal court in North Carolina has held that news outlets are not required to erase or rewrite accurate historical reporting simply because criminal charges are later dismissed or expunged. Dr. Ramesh Sunar was arrested in September 2024, and a local news station (WBTV) accurately reported the arrest, charges, and allegations from the warrant, including his mugshot. More than a year later, the charges were dismissed and expunged. Sunar’s lawyer asked WBTV either to remove the original article or add an update. WBTV declined to delete the story but agreed to publish a second article explaining that the charges had been dropped and expunged — an approach Sunar’s lawyer expressly approved. Nevertheless, Sunar subsequently sued for defamation. In dismissing plaintiff’s defamation claim, the court held that the original reporting was undisputedly accurate at the time of publication, and the later expungement did not retroactively make the reporting false. The court emphasized that a plaintiff’s understandable “desire to undo the past” cannot convert truthful reporting into defamation.