A CNN employee says losing a high-profile defamation case this week might have been expected inside the network, but that didn’t stop it from leaving a mark.
“Being found liable for defamation and dishonesty is a bad thing,” the employee said bluntly in a message to Fox News Digital.
Navy veteran Zachary Young successfully alleged CNN smeared him by implying he illegally profited when helping people flee Afghanistan on the “black market” during the Biden administration’s military withdrawal from the country in 2021. Young believes CNN “destroyed his reputation and business” by branding him an illicit profiteer who exploited “desperate Afghans” during the Nov. 11, 2021, report that first aired on CNN’s “The Lead with Jake Tapper.”
After a chaotic trial that was held over two weeks in Florida, the jury ruled Young was to be awarded $4 million in lost earnings and $1 million in personal damages, and it also found punitive damages were warranted against CNN. Before the jury could rule on the latter amount, CNN and Young reached a settlement.
JURY FINDS CNN COMMITTED DEFAMATION AGAINST NAVY VETERAN, SETTLEMENT REACHED ON PUNITIVE DAMAGES
Afterward, Young said he felt “vindication.”
“It’s been a long three years, and to have the outcome that we wanted, which was vindication publicly, is an incredible feeling, and I’m glad that it’s over, and we don’t have to spend more years and more time arguing about the meaning of a word,” Young told Fox News Digital on Friday.
While sparsely covered at first in the press, as the trial wound down, the case drew more attention from mainstream outlets, and the verdict on Friday was widely covered. CNN’s own media unit has offered minimal coverage of the case. Media correspondent Hadas Gold published a short item about the verdict, and chief media analyst Brian Stelter made brief mention of the outcome in his Reliable Sources newsletter Saturday, in addition to a blurb at the outset of the trial on Jan. 6. According to a Grabien search, CNN has not covered the lawsuit or the jury’s decision on the air.
During the trial, Young’s legal team revealed CNN internal messages obtained through discovery that repeatedly showed staffers expressing hostility toward the Navy veteran.
Among those presented to the jury included one calling him a “s–tbag” and an “a–hole,” and another one saying he has a “punchable face.” It was also revealed that Alex Marquardt, the CNN correspondent who led the on-air report, told a colleague “we’re gonna nail this Zachary Young mf—er,” which was cited repeatedly during the case, and said the report was going to be “your funeral bucko,” referring to Young in an exchange with a colleague.
A CNN spokesperson said the network would take “useful lessons” from the case.
“We remain proud of our journalists and are 100% committed to strong, fearless and fair-minded reporting at CNN, though we will of course take what useful lessons we can from this case,” CNN said in a statement after the settlement.
The CNN employee told Fox News Digital that they didn’t think the issues that arose in CNN’s journalism with this story reflect cultural issues within the company.
“The messages were bad… But I don’t think it’s a network-wide cultural thing,” they said. “It seemed to me it was an overzealous reporter — just someone who believed something was true and framed info in that context… found info to support that and didn’t critically look at their own conclusions.”
They added this comes at a time when morale is poor at the network, which is grappling with low ratings and reported pending layoffs, and there didn’t appear to be any internal “rallying behind” the flag internally.
A spokesperson responded to reports about CNN’s financial health by calling it “very healthy” and noting a report showing parent company Warner Bros. Discovery was making an investment of over $70 million in its digital pivot.
Another CNN insider told Fox News Digital that the private messages that came out in discovery were “damning stuff.”
At another point in the trial, CNN senior national security editor Thomas Lumley was grilled after internal messages showed he was highly skeptical of the “pretty flawed” report. Lumley was called as a witness after internal messages showed he felt the report was “full of holes like Swiss cheese.”
Another reporter involved in the story, Katie Bo Lillis, acknowledged she didn’t think about how much the segment could affect Young; the plaintiff said it wrecked his reputation and also had a drastic effect on his personal life, leaving him depressed and emasculated.
Several CNN figures also testified they didn’t agree with the network’s decision to apologize in 2022 for suggesting Young operated on a “black market.”
“The woeful performance of CNN journalists on the witness stand… juices the impact of Young v. CNN,” The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple wrote. “They stumbled under questioning; they failed to defend a key wording choice; and in certain instances, as in the case of Lillis, they appeared clueless about the impact of their own massive network, which reaches more than 70 million households in the United States.”
“CNN should be deeply embarrassed that despite layers and layers of editorial staff, they could not perform basic journalistic functions nor overcome clear dysfunction among overpaid, arrogant TV stars playing journalist and cowardly editors,” a former CNN staffer who still works in the industry told Fox News Digital.
After the case ended, Young told Fox News Digital he didn’t have any animosity toward the network but did hope CNN and other media organizations learned from the experience.
“I hope that they take this as an opportunity to look in the mirror and realize that, you know, there is room for change and improvement, and if that’s the outcome that it has on CNN, then maybe others in the media also can see that as something that’s positive,” he said.
