CNN found liable for $5 million in defamation trial against US Navy veteran over Afghanistan report
CNN found liable for $5 million in defamation trial against US Navy veteran over Afghanistan report
Share:
The jury awarded Young $5 million and found that he should also receive punitive damages for his pain and suffering. A Florida jury has found CNN liable in a high-stakes defamation trial against U.S. Navy veteran Zachary Young, who alleged that the network maligned him as an “illegal profiteer” with a report on Afghan evacuees being charged thousands of dollars to flee the country following the U.S. military withdrawal.
The jury ruled that CNN would need to pay Young $5 million dollars in damages, adding that he should also be awarded punitive damages. The trial would be heading into a second phase after the jury verdict. The verdict comes weeks after ABC News paid $15 million to Donald Trump’s presidential library fund and another million dollars to his legal team to settle the president-elect’s defamation lawsuit against the network – a move that First Amendment experts warned could have a “chilling effect” on the free press.
In his complaint, Young said his inclusion in the story suggested that his activities were criminal, specifically because of an on-air graphic that used the term “black market.” That banner was also used when the story ran on CNN programming and the network’s website. Young said that he only charged corporate sponsors to extract Afghans and never took money directly from residents, pushing back on the story’s implication that he was exploiting people fearful of the Taliban.
CNN’s legal team and witnesses, meanwhile, argued during the trial that their intention behind the use of the term “black market” was to show that evacuations in the region were taking place in an “unregulated market” and didn’t explicitly mean the actions were criminal. Young’s attorneys, however, noted that the dictionary defined the term as “illegal.”.
