The jury has delivered its verdict in the two-week-long defamation case between Zachary Young, a veteran of the military and expert on contract evacuations for the Middle East, and CNN. CNN was found to be liable for defaming Zachary Young. The jury also found that CNN acted maliciously in reporting about Young.
The jury awarded CNN two compensatory damages for these counts. The jury determined that Young was entitled to $4,000,000 in damages for the economic impact of his inability to work and $1,000,000 in emotional damages. The court is currently on recess and will resume Phase 2 of the case, which will involve what will probably be the biggest determination: punitive damage.
The financial burden imposed on the network is meant to curb future misconduct. This aspect of the pretrial hearings became a contentious issue at times. Not only was the network reluctant to reveal the revenue that it generated, but also the financials for the parent company Warners-Discovery. The defendants claimed the figures stated were opaque or unknown. The court was not pleased with these hollow claims at the time.
In the past week, there was a lot of drama in this case as many figures from CNN appeared on the witness stand, including reporters Alex Marquardt, Katie Bo Lillis, and producers from the network. Jake Tapper also provided video testimony. Tapper had some hilarious moments in the video where he said that he didn’t know what his title was at the network, even though it is on his bio page. He also claimed to be unaware of his show ratings. Fox News disproved this nugget by finding multiple examples where Tapper boasted about his audience numbers on social media.
The jury’s questions did not bode very well for the network. Nick Fondacaro from MRC Newsbusters reported from the courthouse that the jury’s questions to reporters Marquardt, and Lillis were quite challenging. They revealed a jury who was inclined towards believing they had engaged in defamatory conduct. The jury did not probe further after the testimony of CNN’s senior reporter Thomas Lumley, who was one of the CNN staffers who said the Marquardt Report lacked factual structure.
CNN’s shame may even be greater than Fox News’s, following the out-of-court settlement between that network and Dominion Voting Systems. After the settlement, the media, and Jake Tapper in particular, were harshly critical of Fox News. They used derisive language to describe the decision and referred to the network as a less than journalistic source.
Fox’s decision to settle has been interpreted as an admission that the company lied. However, no such admission was made or ruling was given. CNN, which settled out of court over its coverage of Nicolas Sandmann, has not suffered the same fate for many years. In a court, CNN has been found guilty of fabricating a story and doing so in an act of malice. This finding could be argued to have more weight than that of the Fox settlement. Now we await the second phase in this defamation suit to see if it results in a greater level of financial penalty.
