After months of buildup and a couple weeks of trial (and a free trip to Florida to cover it), the Media Research Center’s Nicholas Fondacaro got the outcome he and his employer were hoping for in the defamation lawsuit against CNN. Fondacaro gushed in a Jan. 17 post when the verdict came in:
On Friday, a jury of six in Florida’s 14th Circuit Court in Bay County has found CNN liable for the defamation of Navy veteran Zachary Young and that he was entitled economic and emotional damages, a ruling that proved CNN was not worthy of their moniker “the most trusted name in news.” They also found that CNN’s reporters had demonstrated expressed malice, actual malice, and outrageous behavior, which opened the door for a massive punitive damages judgement.
The jury also found Young was entitled to $4 million in economic damages and $1 million in emotional damages. They also ruled that CNN should be subject to punitive damages, but the two sides settled Friday afternoon following nearly 90 minutes of discussions.
A ruling of liable meant the jury had determined CNN published the defamatory material, the material was “of and concerning” Young, the materials that was published was false, said false material rose to the level of defamation, CNN was negligent in their news reporting about Young, and that Young had sustained damages as a result of the material.
Only $5 million in damages and undisclosed punitive damages? That’s quote a comedown from the “$1 billion defamation trial” Fondacaro had been hyping this would be, and we can probably assume the punitive damages are probably not much higher than that. This reminds us a bit of “Covington kid” Nick Sandmann’s similar lawsuit against CNN a few years back, which resulted in a confidential settlement that the MRC similarly insisted was a major victory despite the likelihood of Sandmann getting little more than go-away money.
Fondacaro made sure to tout Young’s lawyers, which whom he colluded to manufacture biased coverage of the trial:
Young’s lead counsel Vel Freedman said in his closing that the Marquardt segment ran on 11 different CNN shows both domestically and on CNN International. And, in addition to Marquardt’s defamatory report, it was accompanied by anchors making their own defamatory statements about Young.
The jury also found CNN had operated with expressed and actual malice. The evidence presented to the jury was clear; Marquardt had messaged colleagues that he was going to “nail this Zachary Young Mfucker” while calling the report was going to be “your funeral bucko.” CNN editors called him a “shit” and “a shitbag” who had a “punchable face.”
At the same time, senior editor Tom Lumley was warning that Marquardt’s report was “80% emotion and 20% obscured fact” and “full of holes like Swiss cheese.”
Fondcaro couldn’t be bothered to get any reaction from CNN — that’s how little he cares about journalism as actual journalists do it.
Later that day, Young’s lawyers rewarded Fondacaro for all the free and fluffy PR he gave them with an exclusive (and softball) interview with Young himself:
The defamation case brought by Navy veteran Zachary Young has left CNN permanently marked as “fake news” after his victory in court on Friday. As NewsBusters previously reported, the jury of six found CNN did defame Young, that they did it with malice, and they should be punished for it. The ruling spurred CNN to seek an undisclosed settlement. And in the wake of the trial NewsBusters was the first to speak with Young and his lead counsel Vel Freedman.
NewsBusters asked Young what he hoped CNN and the larger media industry take away from this trial:
My message is really just – it’s not vindictive, it never was. I was never trying to get revenge on CNN, but this is obviously something that’s very personal for me, and it has caused a lot of hardship for me and my family. And I wanted to make sure that it was exposed. And I hope that there was some lessons learned from it. And my real goal was to really improve the media in the U.S. and help them be able to be honest with themselves and take a look in the mirror. You know, sometimes change is not easy, sometimes it’s painful. And I think it had a good outcome in that regard.
When asked what the result of the trial meant to him, Young said: “It’s been a long three years and I got the outcome that I wanted. I wanted vindication. I wanted to show what happened. And I was able to do that. It wasn’t a pleasant experience, but it had a great outcome.”
Unmentioned by Fondacaro: Whether or not Young saw it as revenge, his lawyers partnered with a right-wing activist organization that very much sought revenge against CNN, and Young was their willing tool. The MRC would not have spent thousands of dollars to fly Fondacaro to Florida and put him up in a hotel for two weeks if a payoff of revenge wasn’t likely.
It was only at the end of this post that Fondacaro noted a statement from CNN about the case. Again, he couldn’t be bothered to actually talk to an actual CNN person. He concluded by gloating: “This is forever true: CNN’s Jake Tapper, Alex Marquardt, and Katie Bo Lillis defamed Zachary Young.”
Fondacaro concluded his day by appearing on Tim Graham’s podcast to talk about the trial. Fondacaro hyped how the jury was as hostile to CNN as he was. Graham gushed to Fondacaro that his fellow right-wing activists were “giving you credit for being on this story form the beginning. … It really is a moment where we want to say not only you were the first on this, you were very thorough on this. And so that’s where people have come to rely on what you were doing.” Fondacaro responded:
One of the things I tweeted out on X is — and I want people to know this — these facts are now true. Jake Tapper, Katie Bo Lillis and Peter Marquardt have gotten CNN — their reporting has found CNN liable for defamation. At the end of the day, these people that CNN holds up as the bastions of reporting, the pinnacle of professionalism in journalism, they have now been responsible for CNN being found liable for defamation.
Graham whined that CNN’s Brian Stelter wrote a book on Fox News’ defamation of Dominion, which cost the network $787 million, then tried to equivocate the Fox News and CNN situations, citing “one bad day” at CNN versus “one bad week” at Fox News, adding that “these sorts of verdicts should make them more careful in the future.” But as we documented at the time, Graham never demanded that Fox News be held accountable for its indisputable wrongdoings (though he did ultimately admit that “Fox News agreed to pay $787 million to Dominion in a settlement rather than present any of that evidence” to a court and jury), and Fondacaro whined that Fox News was being criticized over the settlement. Graham also surprisingly admitted that Fox News’s job is to spread right-wing narratives rather than to report the truth, gloating: “This won’t damage Fox’s reputation — or let’s put it this way: It won’t damage people’s reliance on Fox to try and balance out what the liberal media does.”
Graham and Fondacaro went on to analyze the case in a way they never did in the Fox News-Dominion case — after all, analyzing Fox in a similarly journalistic way doesn’t politically benefit either Fox or the MRC.
There was no discussion of the collusion between Fondacaro and Young’s lawyers that fuel his biased reporting, and there was no mention what financial compensation, if any, there was.
Fondacaro concluded by chortling over a CNN attorney’s drink getting stuck in a vending machine, which he also tweeted about:
Just another reminder that Fondacaro was there for partisan revenge, not for anything remotely resembling journalism.