Media Research Center writer Nicholas Fondacaro has long served asbeing allegedly defamed the (paid?) PR agent for Zachary Young, who won a lawsuit against CNN over being allegedly defamed. Fondacaro was upset that Young’s trollsuit against the Associated Press was thrown out because the AP committed the apparent offense of fighting back, so he cheered Young’s appeal in a Feb. 28 post:
As NewsBusters was first to report last November, Navy veteran Zachary Young filed an appeal for his $453 million defamation suit against the Associated Press. Three months later and both sides have submitted their arguments to Florida’s First District Court of Appeals as they await a date for their oral arguments.
In the initial appeal Young stuck to his allegations that the AP defamed him by using the term “smuggle” to describe his operations to rescue people from Afghanistan during the collapse; continuing to point out that AP Style Guide gives a negative definition to the word:
[…]He also accused the court of “erroneously granting” the motion and denying Young an opportunity for punitive damages, and taking direct aim at Judge Willaim Henry’s language:
The court wove a theme throughout the order that this case was a bad “sequel” to the CNN case that “should not have been made,” a “money grab,” and the “smuggling people” charge as innocuous as sneaking “candy” “into a movie theater.” The court’s irreverence and lack of judicial decorum reveal bias.
Language like that was why Young was requesting a new judge to be assigned to the on remand.
Fondacaro made sure to quote two of Young’s lawyers — one of whom he insisted on giving the “esq.” honorific — but included only a single quote from the AP’s lawyers. He went on to huff: “As things stand right now, both sides have also filed motions requesting an oral argument before the appellate court. The hearing has yet to be scheduled.”
Fondacaro also invoked Young to grouse about a separate lawsuit from a Trtump buddy in an April 20 post:
CNN was unapologetic even after they were found liable for their malicious defamation of Navy veteran Zachary Young last year. And in reporting on FBI Director Kash Patel’s $250 million defamation suit against The Atlantic for their recent reporting about him, on Monday, CNN’s The Situation Roomsuggested was just him “performing” for President Trump and suggested he should have just ignored the possible defamation because more people have since read it.
In giving a rundown of the suit, chief media analyst Brian Stelter rhetorically scoffed at any possibly the suit legitimacy. According to him, Patel was only “performing” for President Trump:
[…]CNN knew actual malice quite well since it was proven they acted with it against Young. The evidence presented to the jury was clear; former chief national security correspondent Alex Marquardt had messaged colleagues that he was going to “nail this Zachary Young Mfucker” while saying the report was going to be “your funeral bucko.” Editors called him a “shit” and “a shitbag” who had a “punchable face.”
Those CNN messages came out via discovery. So, discovery would be the phase where any actual malice against Patel maybe uncovered. If there’s any to be found.
When hearing time came for Young’s appeal, Fondacaro made it clear whose side he’s on in a June 9 post:
In a hearing for the defamation case of Zachary Young v. The Associated Press on Tuesday, the AP’s lawyer argued to a panel of three judges for Florida’s First District Court of Appeal that the news organization’s own stylebook didn’t matter when determining the definition of a key word in their allegedly defamatory reporting. However, the AP Stylebook was the go-to standard for many newsrooms and students around the world.
As NewsBusters previously reported, the AP’s use of the term “smuggling” was a key part of Young’s case against the newswire, which saw many outlets parrot its allegedly defamatory words. The hearing was part of Young’s hope to get his defamation lawsuits against AP and Puck News back on track after they were tossed out in August 2025.
In a Facebook post from February 6 2019, the AP Stylebook wrote this about human smuggling: “Human smuggling or people smuggling typically involves transporting people across an international border illegally, with their consent, in exchange for a fee.”
“Well, smuggling can be used in a rhetorical sense where it doesn’t imply illegality, but that’s not the way it was used in this article,” argued Young’s counsel Lisa Glass to the panel.
[…]To provide a fuller context for how the AP used the phrase “human smuggling,” Glass noted Young provided the court with “40 examples of recent reporting by the AP, which were reported both before and after the article at issue that used ‘human smuggling,’ ‘people smuggling’ in exactly the way that its stylebook was intended; to describe criminal conduct.”
Fondacaro lashed out at a lawyer for the AP in a June 12 post:
For those following NewsBusters’ coverage of the defamation cases brought against CNN (successful) and the Associated Press (on-going) by Navy veteran Zachary Young, one name should be familiar: Charles D. Tobin. A lawyer with Ballard Spahr, Tobin was part of the legal team that represented CNN and then the AP. As with the nature of defamation cases, both hinged on words and their interpretations. Tobin’s arguments before Florida’s First District Court of Appeal have repeatedly shown an aversion to holding the media to objective definitions.
In the CNN case, the phrase “black market” was one of the contentious points Young successfully argued were defamatory against him. In an unsuccessful April 2024 appeal to the 1st DCA to overturn a ruling allowing Young to seek punitive damages, Tobin argued that a subjective use of the phrase be adopted[.] […]
How the media defend themselves in court gives insight to how the media operate in their newsrooms and editorial meetings. Words apparently have no objective meaning; they have one meaning in their reports and other in the courtroom.
The next day, Fondacaro did more pro-Young cheerleading:
A highly anticipated ruling by the Florida Supreme Court late last week all but ensured the defamation suit filed by Navy veteran Zachary Young against the Associated Press would get revived on appeal. And just days after telling Florida’s First District Court of Appeal to ignore the AP’s own stylebook in the case, the newswire’s lawyer wanted the court to ignore the Supreme Court’s ruling as well.
Those who have kept up with NewsBusters’ coverage of Young’s successful defamation suit against CNN, may recall that the news outlet attempted to get Florida’s 14th Circuit Court to put off progressing the case until the Supreme Court finally issued a ruling on Perlmutter v. Federal Insurance Company.
Simply known as Perlmutter, the ruling provided new case law on, among other things, how trial-level courts were not to apply a clear and convincing evidence standard to punitive damages claims in the pleading stage of a proceeding:
[…]How did apply to Young’s case?
Cutting through the legalese, when Judge William Scott Henry threw out Young’s case against the AP (and his case against Puck News) he argued against the quality of the evidence presented in the early pleading stage, and directly compared it to what was presented in the CNN case[.]
Fondacaro added in an update:
On Monday, June 15 Florida’s First District Court of Appeal issued a one-sentence order saying they were not going to ignore the new case law provided by the Florida Supreme Court and would strike the Associated Press’s request for them to ignore it. “The Court grants the motion to strike docketed June 13, 2026 and strikes the response docketed June 12, 2026,” the order read.
Fondacaro then guested on Tim Graham’s June 15 podcast:
Then Fondacaro updated us on Zachary Young’s ongoing defamation suits, against AP and Puck.com. A highly anticipated ruling by the Florida Supreme Court ensured the defamation suit would get revived on appeal. And just days after telling Florida’s First District Court of Appeal to ignore the AP’s own stylebook in the case, the newswire’s lawyer wanted the court to ignore the Supreme Court’s ruling as well.
But all of Fondacaro’s fluffing of Young went for naught. As he wrote in a June 23 post:
In a ruling released on Monday, two weeks after oral argument, Florida’s First District Court of Appeal affirmed a ruling from Florida’s 14th Judicial Circuit that threw out a defamation case brought against the Associated Press by Navy veteran Zachary Young. The ruling means the case will not proceed.
As NewsBusters previously reported, the AP’s use of the term “smuggling” was a key part of Young’s case against the newswire, which saw many outlets parrot its allegedly defamatory words. The hearing was part of Young’s hope to get his defamation lawsuits against AP and Puck News back on track after they were tossed out in August 2025.
In a Facebook post from February 6 2019, the AP Stylebook wrote this about human smuggling: “Human smuggling or people smuggling typically involves transporting people across an international border illegally, with their consent, in exchange for a fee.”
[…]Things seemed promising for Young given that two of the judges who heard the appeal, Judges Roberts and Thomas D. Winokur sided with him to reaffirm that he could seek punitive damages in his successful defamation case against CNN. Both also seemed to put heavy emphasis on definitions and the language used in reports by the media.
As of publication, Florida’s First District Court of Appeal had not issued a ruling on Young’s case against Puck News.
Fondacaro was never this concerned that his fellow right-wingers at Fox News had to pay $787 million to settle a defamation lawsuit from election-tech company Dominion. He has never explain the difference between the two legal actions.