A Florida jury will decide whether CNN defamed a U.S. Navy veteran in a 2021 report on how Afghans were being charged thousands of dollars to be evacuated after the U.S. military withdrawal from their country.
Closing legal arguments were made Thursday in the case, which will in part be a test of the public perception of the press, and CNN in particular, after years of being demonized by President-elect Donald Trump and his acolytes. A jury verdict against CNN would be a major embarrassment to the network.
CNN is being sued for defamation by Zachary Young, a security consultant living in Vienna who has worked for the CIA. Young was included in a report by CNN’s chief security correspondent, Alex Marquardt, on how Afghans, desperate to escape Taliban forces after the U.S. exit, were charged exorbitant fees for help in getting out.
Young, who advertised his evacuation services on LinkedIn, has said he only took on clients with corporate sponsors. He extracted 22 employees for Bloomberg and Audible from Afghanistan. He said he never took money directly from Afghans, who CNN said in the piece were being exploited as they feared retribution from the Taliban for aiding American forces.
Young was seeking $14,500 for getting people out of the country at the time. His services were described in the CNN segment alongside interviews with Afghans who spoke about efforts by people to escape, but they had no connection to Young.
His suit said his inclusion in the story, which used the term “black market” in an on-screen banner, implied that his activity was criminal, even though Marquardt’s segment made no such charge. “Black market” was also used in the introduction of the report when it first ran on “The Lead With Jake Tapper,” other CNN programs and the network’s website and social media accounts.
The jury in the civil trial, heard in a Bay County, Fla., court, must determine whether CNN journalists acted with actual malice, which is defined as the publication of false information with reckless disregard of the truth. If CNN is found liable, Young can be awarded punitive damages.
Young claims the story destroyed his reputation and ability to earn a living — driving his annual income from $350,000 to zero — and caused severe emotional and psychological distress. Val Freedman, an attorney for Young, described CNN as “peddling scandal for views and clicks” and asked the jurors to “send a message that news organizations must be held accountable.”
CNN’s defense team and witnesses from the network said the term black market was intended to reflect an “unregulated market” that is not necessarily criminal. Young’s attorneys noted the dictionary definition of black market says its illegal.
“Do not let CNN rewrite the English language to avoid liability in this case,” Freedman told jurors Thursday.
CNN issued an on-air apology to Young after his lawyers wrote to the network threatening legal action. But Marquardt and several CNN producers and executives testified that they did not believe the correction was necessary from an editorial standpoint.
Adam Levine, senior vice president for Washington newsgathering at CNN, testified that the correction was issued at the behest of the network’s legal department to avoid a lawsuit from Young.
Over the course of the nine-day trial, lawyers for Young portrayed Marquardt’s reporting as “theater” aimed at attracting viewers with little regard for the truth.
Young’s lawyers have focused on a video showing Marquardt re-creating a cellphone call he made to Young, who did not pick up. At the end of the video shoot, Marquardt is seen on the tape referencing an old “Saturday Night Live” routine featuring Jon Lovitz as Master Thespian, a pompous actor.
Marquardt acknowledged the joke after he re-created the call but noted that it was a standard practice in television news production.
“When you’re putting together a TV package, you need a bunch of different shots to be able to edit it together and tell the whole story,” Marquardt told the court. “It’s a very standard practice in a production to get as many shots as possible.”
The evidence also showed harsh descriptions of Young in CNN employee text messages discussing the story, calling him “a motherf—” and an “a-hole.”
Jurors were taken through the editorial vetting process that every CNN report goes through. Testimony showed there were questions raised about the story, which one producer said “has more holes than Swiss cheese.” While the issues with the story were resolved, the on-screen banners and the introductions did not go through the same type of rigorous review process.
