A Florida jury on Friday found that CNN defamed a U.S. Navy veteran in a 2021 story about people paid to rescue endangered Afghans following the Taliban takeover of that country.
It was an unusual ruling against a media outlet in a defamation case. Libel laws are generally protective of 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 onscreen in a story about a “black market” of smuggling out desperate Afghans for high fees.
The jury awarded Young $5 million in damages and is now being asked to determine whether CNN must pay additional punitive damages.
Young had argued that his business targeted sponsors who could afford to pay for Afghans to get out, not individual Afghans charged as much as $10,000 for the service. While CNN said it was wrong to use the phrase “black market,” it contended that its reporting on Young was accurate.
CNN said it would have no comment on the verdict until after the punitive damages part of the trial is concluded.
At a trial located in a conservative part of the country, Young’s lawyers urged jurors to send a message to the media. Questions submitted by jurors during the trial telegraphed some hostility, with one wondering whether CNN had treated the plaintiff as guilty until proven innocent.
Private messages also became part of the trial, with plaintiffs showing internal messages where CNN’s reporter, Alex Marquardt, said some profane and unflattering things about Young. Marquardt testified in the trial that his story “was not a hit piece.”
Marquardt’s story first aired on Nov. 11, 2021, during Jake Tapper’s CNN broadcast, and subsequent printed stories were used on the network’s website.
Defamation trials are actually rare in the United States, in part because the strong constitutional protections for the press make proving libel difficult. From the media’s standpoint, taking a case to a judge or jury is a risk many executives don’t want to take.
Rather than defend statements that George Stephanopoulos made about Trump last spring, ABC News last month agreed to make the former president’s libel lawsuit go away by paying him $15 million toward his presidential library. In the end, ABC parent Walt Disney Co. concluded an ongoing fight against Trump wasn’t worth it, win or lose.
In another case, Fox News agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems $787 million on the day the trial was due to start in 2023 to settle the company’s claims of inaccurate reporting in the wake of the 2020 presidential election.
With the verdict in, lawyers were hearing testimony during the punitive damage phase of the trial about the overall financial health of CNN.
