A Florida jury found Friday that CNN defamed a US Navy veteran in a 2021 story about people paid to rescue Afghans in danger following the Taliban’s takeover of that country.
It was an unusual ruling against a media outlet in a defamation case. Defamation laws generally protect news organizations, and plaintiffs must meet a high standard to prove defamation.
The jury in Panama City, Florida, deliberated for more than eight hours starting Thursday before ruling in favor of Zachary Young, who blamed CNN for destroying his business by showing his face on screen in a story about a “market “black” smuggled by desperate Afghans. for high fees.
The jury awarded Young $5 million in damages. An undisclosed agreement on punitive damages was reached later Friday, according to the judge overseeing the case. Details of that deal were not immediately available.
Young had argued that his business was aimed at sponsors who could afford to pay for the Afghans to leave, not at individual Afghans who charged up to $10,000 for the service. While CNN said it was wrong to use the phrase “black market,” it maintained that its reporting on Young was accurate.
CNN told The Associated Press it would not comment on the verdict. But he sent a statement to the Mediaite website saying: “We remain proud of our journalists and are 100% committed to strong, brave and impartial reporting on CNN, although we will of course learn what useful lessons we can from this case. “
At a trial in a conservative part of the country, Young’s lawyers urged jurors to send a message to the media. Questions presented by jurors during the trial conveyed some hostility, and one wondered if CNN had treated the plaintiff as guilty until proven innocent.
Private messages were also part of the trial, and the plaintiffs showed internal messages in which CNN reporter Alex Marquardt said some obscene and unflattering things about Young. Marquardt testified at trial that his story “was not a success.”
Marquardt’s story first aired on November 11, 2021, during Jake Tapper’s CNN broadcast, and subsequent print stories were used on the network’s website.
In reality, defamation lawsuits are rare in the United States, in part because strong constitutional protections for the press make it difficult to prove defamation. From the media’s point of view, taking a case before a judge or jury is a risk that many executives do not want to take.
Instead of defending statements George Stephanopoulos made about Trump last spring, ABC News agreed last month to make the former president’s defamation lawsuit disappear by paying him $15 million for his presidential library. In the end, ABC parent Walt Disney Co. concluded that an ongoing fight against Trump was not worth it, win or lose.
In another case, Fox News agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems $787 million on the day a trial was due to begin in 2023 to resolve the company’s allegations of inaccurate reporting in the wake of the 2020 presidential election.
