A 51-year-old CNN field producer filed a $5 million lawsuit against the network's parent company this week, alleging his boss refused to promote him during his 17 years as a CNN employee primarily because he was middle-aged and black.

Stanley Wilson also named his boss—CNN VP and bureau chief Peter Janos—in the suit, a move that might allow him to collect punitive damages. According to Wilson, Janos "demonstrated that he never liked [Wilson] and never wanted him at the bureau."

Wilson—who says he won more than two dozen journalism awards during his time at CNN—was promoted only once during his 17 years with the network. According to the suit, he was passed over for a dozen promotions once Janos became his boss.

In the lawsuit, Wilson claims that he was the only African-American producer in the western region at the time of his termination—the result of a "wholesale discrimination against African-American men in the hiring and promotions of staff producers and television photographers in Los Angeles."

Wilson also alleges that Janos wanted to fire him because his wife had been undergoing expensive fertility treatments which were charged to his employee health insurance. When Wilson went on paternity leave, he alleges that Janos hired a younger, Caucasian producer and began giving him prime-time work while "relegating [Wilson] to inferior assignments."

Wilson was finally terminated, according to the suit, when a story he submitted to a copy editor contained three sentences that "needed attribution because it appeared too similar to another story."

Wilson claims Janos used the story as a pretext to fire him: putting him on leave, auditing his work, and finally terminating him without ever disclosing the results of the audit.

And even if he had plagiarized, Wilson claims, terminating him would have been a "grossly disproportionate result." His attorney notes in the lawsuit that CNN contributor and noted plagiarizer Fareed Zakaria "publicly apologized, and was briefly suspended from CNN, but not terminated."

[image via AP]