CNN defamation trial comes at a rough time for legacy media — and for the struggling network At a particularly inopportune time for legacy media and CNN, the news outlet is on trial in Florida this week, accused of defaming a Navy veteran involved in rescuing endangered Afghans from that country when the U.S. ended its involvement there in 2021.
In a broader sense, the case puts the news media on the stand in journalism critic Donald Trump's home state weeks before he's due to begin his second term as president, and on the same day Facebook's parent introduced a Trump-friendly policy of backing off fact checks.
Said Jane Kirtley, director of the Silha Center for the Study of Media Ethics and the Law at the University of Minnesota: “Everybody in the news media is on trial in this case.".
The veteran, Zachary Young, blames CNN for destroying his business when it displayed his face onscreen during a story that discussed a “black market” in smuggling out Afghans for high fees at the time of the Taliban takeover.
“You're going to have an opportunity to do something significant in this trial,” Roche told jurors in Florida's 14th Judicial Circuit Courts in Panama City on Tuesday.
