A jury found CNN liable for defamation of Zachary Young, a Navy vet and security contractor. Young helped Afghans escape the Taliban during President Joe Biden’s disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal in 2021.Young accused CNN of ruining his reputation and destroying his business by portraying him as someone who preyed on Afghans trying to escape, exploiting and profiting off of their fear.The contractor claimed the story “rendered him a pariah in his industry and sent him down a spiral of depression, sleeplessness and panic attacks.”The jury ruled CNN owed “$4 million in economic damages and $1 million in emotional damages.”However, the jury also said CNN should pay punitive damages.https://twitter.com/BrentHBaker/status/1880307610353615218The story stems from a report on The Lead with Jake Tapper on November 11, 2021.Nicholas Fondacaro wrote at NewsBusters:
Tapper led into the segment by painting an image of “black market” hustlers who charged “exorbitant fees” taking advantage of desperate people:
In our world today, the U.S. government, the Biden administration says that as of last week it had assisted in the departure of at least 377 U.S. citizens and 279 lawful permanent residents of the U.S. from Afghanistan since August 31st. Still, many Afghans, Afghans who desperately want to flee Taliban rule and Afghans who say their lives are at stake, they remain behind. As CNN’s Alex Marquardt has discovered, Afghans trying to get out of the country, face a black market full of promises, demands of exorbitant fees, and no guarantee of safety or success.
Chief national security correspondent Alex Marquardt, who was promoted to that position while the suit was still on going, singled out Young as the face of the people who was “exploit[ing]” “desperate Afghans”:
According to Afghans and activists we’ve spoken with desperate Afghans are being exploited like that young man, told they can get them or their families out if they pay exorbitant often impossible amounts. One LinkedIn user posted messages with Young, where Young said it would be $75,000 for a car to Pakistan. He told another, it would be 14 and a half thousand per person to get to the United Arab Emirates or Albania for another 4,000. Prices well beyond the reach of most Afghans.
Young’s lead counsel Vel Freedman said in his closing that the Marquardt segment ran on 11 different CNN shows both domestically and on CNN International. And, in addition to Marquardt’s defamatory report, it was accompanied by anchors making their own defamatory statements about Young.
Young’s defense presented evidence from behind the scenes and…woo boy:
The jury also found CNN had operated with expressed and actual malice. The evidence presented to the jury was clear; Marquardt had messaged colleagues that he was going to “nail this Zachary Young Mfucker” while calling the report was going to be “your funeral bucko.” CNN editors called him a “shit” and “a shitbag” who had a “punchable face.”At the same time, senior editor Tom Lumley was warning that Marquardt’s report was “80% emotion and 20% obscured fact” and “full of holes like Swiss cheese.”The jury also heard witness after witness from CNN who testified under oath they didn’t like that CNN aired an apology and they didn’t think it was needed. All of them testified under oath that they would still run the story. When asked by Freedman and the jury, none of them said they were sorry.
Young filed the lawsuit in 2022. Along with the accusations above, Young said CNN never told its audience “that his clients were nonprofits and corporations, including Bloomberg and Audible, and that his prices reflected complex evacuation logistics.”
Young’s case went forward in June when three judges on the First District Court of Appeal for the State of Florida decided he had enough evidence to move forward.
NewsBusters discovered CNN scrubbed the segment from the page for the episode.
No one made a note about the missing segment.
Defamation is hard to prove for obvious reasons. You know, the First Amendment.
Well, this case, among others, has provided more hints that the mainstream media outlets consider themselves untouchable.
But as the outlets continue to shed the mask, they’re going to find that people don’t have them on the pedestal:
Lyrissa Lidsky, a University of Florida law professor who focuses on defamation and free-speech law, said the verdict shows that jurors are less willing to give news media the benefit of the doubt.Among the lessons from the litigation, she said: “If you have people on your team waving red flags, you probably should take that seriously.”
David Axelrod, a CNN attorney, provided a great example! He told the jurors “that the higher the penalty, the less money CNN would have to cover natural disasters and global conflicts.”
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