The Media Research Center’s Nicholas Fondacaro colluded with Zachary Young’s lawyers to promote his side of the story in his lawsuit against CNN, while also denigrating CNN as befits his employment at a right-wing activist organization dedicated to the destruction of CNN for being insufficiently right-wing. That blatant bias continued in his Jan. 11 writeup of trial happenings:
In addition to CNN’s defamation lawyer smearing a decorated two-star general in open court during Friday’s proceedings, it was the first time someone from CNN was called to testify in the $1 billion defamation trial against the network. Senior editor and fact-checker Fuzz Hogan was on the witness stand where he was belligerent with plaintiff’s counsel, oozed arrogance, defended CNN’s editorial practices, and actually admitted that CNN didn’t try to get in contact with the companies Navy veteran and Plaintiff Zachary Young worked for to get their people out of Afghanistan.
Hogan, who’s a member of CNN’s internally lauded “Triad” of editorial, legal, and standards & practices oversight personnel, described Young as “a shit” in a private message that two courts and four judges had said looked like “actual malice.”
In cross-examination with CNN’s lead counsel David Axelrod (not to be confused with the CNN commentator of the same name), Hogan agreed that he took “pride” in being a “fact-checker” for CNN. “We have a promise to the viewer that we’re going to tell them things that are true,” Hogan proclaimed.
But when getting questioned by plaintiffs co-counsel Joe Delich, Hogan admitted that neither he nor anyone at CNN bothered to reach out and ask any of Young’s clients about evacuation efforts, including their fellow news outlet Bloomberg:
[…]Hogan also claimed he was unaware that CNN had actually issued an apology to Young for using the term “black market” against him. “I thought it was a correction, but okay,” he said. “Wasn’t aware of that correction either.”
“Do you recall in that correction that CNN – it said ‘CNN did not intend to suggest Mr. Young was operating in black market?” Delich asked. “Believe it or not, I have not yet read the correction, so I’ll trust you on that,” Hogan said, despite the correction/apology being issued three years ago.
The bias continued in his Jan. 13 writeup:
Week Two of the $1 billion defamation trial against CNN kicked off Monday with the testimony of CNN chief national security correspondent Alex Marquardt, the architect of the allegedly defamatory report. The key moments from this time on the witness stand were when he refused to apologize to Navy veteran and Plaintiff Zachary Young, doubled down on the false assertions that Young was interested in taking money from Afghans, and getting pressed by plaintiff’s counsel on being war profiteer himself.
And perhaps most telling were the nine questions submitted to Marquardt by the jury, which appeared to suggest CNN was in trouble in their eyes.
Marquardt was under pressure from the get-go with plaintiff’s lead counsel Vel Freedman asking him if he had reached out to Audible and Bloomberg, two of Young’s clients, to fact-check if he had helped them.
“The story was not about Bloomberg and Audible,” Marquardt testified. Reading from Marquardt’s deposition testimony, Freedman noted that Marquardt said: “I have not asked about the details [about the evacuations]…I did not want to know…”
Marquardt doubled down on that position on the stand. “The corporate evacuations were not something I was interested in,” Marquardt testified; corporate evacuations were all Young did.
[…]A lack of remorse was a common theme throughout Marquardt’s testimony. He told the jury that “it’s always the hope” that CNN would spread his story as widely as possible;” and if it was up to him, his offending report would have ran “every single hour” on CNN. He also said he stood by his original offending report and said he didn’t think CNN should have apologized to Young.
[…]In cross-examination, Marquardt said he wanted the jury to see the messages of him and his colleagues cursing out Young because it was evidence of all the “research” he did for the story.
Marquardt claimed he didn’t hold “personal animosity” against Young, despite cursing him out in private messages. “You take your personal feelings and you put them aside. You just report the facts,” the CNN reporter asserted.
The two conflicting gripes Marquardt had with Young were about how Young was running his business in terms of evacuations. Firstly, he wanted to know how Young “could justify” charging the prices he was citing; his second issue was that Young was only working with corporately sponsored Afghans (the only ones who could afford it).
Throughout different points in his testimony, Marquardt brought up his disgust at Young’s business turning a “profit” for his network putting their lives on the line to get people out.
Fondacaro got help from one of his buddies in the right-wing media bubble to bash a CNN anchor for his Jan. 14 writeup:
In lieu of adding more in-person witnesses to a trial with a hard deadline, Tuesday’s proceedings in the $1 billion defamation trial against CNN featured the sworn deposition videos of five CNN employees who had their fingerprints on the offending report. One of the more eyebrow-raising testimonies of the bunch came from CNN anchor Jake Tapper who’s show – The Lead – the report initially ran on. In his testimony, Tapper claimed he didn’t know his title nor cared about the ratings of his show. But according to a post he made on X, that could be a lie since he has touted good ratings in the past.
Near the beginning of the video, after giving a brief overview of his film school education, Tapper was asked about where he was currently employed, “CNN,” and what his title was. That’s when the first curious answer cropped up: “I think it’s chief Washington anchor and senior Washington correspondent. But I don’t pay a tremendous amount of attention to titles. But I think that’s what it is. I am the anchor of several shows on CNN.”
[…]While Tapper claimed underoath that he didn’t care about the ratings, Peter Hasson, editor for the Washington Free Beacon, published a screenshot of Tapper’s X account where he was indeed touting the ratings of one of his “several shows on CNN” and even seemed to hint that he tracked them.
“Ratings go up and ratings go down, but UNITED STATES OF SCANDAL had the highest ratings in the key demo in cable news on Sunday … and was the most watched show on CNN! Thank you for watching!” he wrote.
Fondacaro also played defense for his buddies at Fox News (which employs numerous former MRC employees):
Further, Freedman brought up his speaking engagement at the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, where he lashed out at Fox News. “And I think the question is, if all you care about is clicks and newsstand sales and circulation and you don’t care at all about the truth and the facts, you end up with a settlement with Dominion Election Systems,” he sniped to the applause of the crowd.
He went on to grimly proclaim: “If all you care about is that, and you don’t care about the responsibility – the grave responsibility we have to be fair and to be honest, then you are a cancer on the democracy we have.”
Fondacaro didn’t mention that his employer gave Fox News a pass for its repeated defamation of Dominion, refusing to offer anything but mild criticism of the outlet because it, like the MRC, resides in the right-wing bubble — which makes the MRC’s obsession with this case hypocritical at best.
Fondacaro appeared gleeful that the jury seemed to hate CNN as much as he does in his Jan. 14 writeup:
Something unique about the Florida judicial system is, barring objection of counsels and the court, jurors get to ask questions of the witnesses. These questions could be used as possible insight into a jury’s temperament and possible mindset as a trial unfolds. In the case of the $1 billion defamation trial against CNN, the tea leaves seemed to indicate on Wednesday that they weren’t looking too favorably on CNN just hours before they’re set to start deliberations.
The questions to CNN reporter Katie Bo Lillis (pictured above) pressed her on her treatment of Navy veteran and Plaintiff Zachary Young, and called into question her and CNN’s apparent thought that people were “obliged” to speak to CNN.
Noting that “for the record, there were no objections to the questions from counsel or the court,” Judge William Scott Henry of the 14th Judicial Circuit of Florida read the questions.
There certainly weren’t any objections from Fondacaro — after all, the jurors seem to be acting not online his co-workers.