Learn how CNN defamed one Navy veteran, Zachary Young, leading to a costly legal battle and tarnished reputation for the news network.
last week we told you about the Blockbuster defamation verdict against CNN Jake Tapper show the lead in 2021 ran a report by a reporter named Alex Mart that accused Navy veteran Zachary young of exploiting quote desperate Afghans by demanding quote exorbitant fees and operating in a quote Black Market while offering evacuation Services after Joe Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan CNN scrubbed the report from the internet but we have it here which you can watch for yourself CNN’s Alex
marquart has discovered Afghans trying to get out of the country face a black market full of promises demands of exorbitant fees and no guarantee of safety or success what is the US doing that you know of to try to get you and your family out Unfortunately they are not doing now anything up to 31st they said everything is closed and it’s finished we did not receive anything back from us embassador from any other organization so he went online where he found a man named Zachary young who is one of many advertising evacuations from
Afghanistan posting just this week we can deliver one LinkedIn user posted messages with young where young said it would be $75,000 for a car to Pakistan he told another it would be 14 a half thousand per person to get to the United Arab Emirates or Albania for another 4 ,000 prices well beyond the reach of most Afghans we got Young’s number and called but he didn’t pick up in a text message he told CNN that Afghans trying to leave are expected to have sponsors pay for them if someone reaches out we need to
understand if they have a sponsor behind them to be able to pay evacuation costs which young says are highly volatile and based on environmental realities young repeatedly declined to break down the costs or say if he’s making money and the lower third for the listening audience has got the stuff about Black Market and exorbitant fees I mean it’s a fascinating story except it’s not true despite what the report and its onscreen chirons meaning the lower third on your screen showed young did not operate in a Black Market he did not
advertise to Afghans he did not charge exorbitant prices to Afghans and he did not exploit Afghans what Young did was save dozens and if that report were not bad enough what CNN was doing behind the scenes and what they were saying about this guy young was even worse you just saw CNN’s markart try to make the phone call to Young well thanks to Discovery in the case we have the video of him filming his reaction shots to this watch this okay roll on there oh well theater theater theater not news theater
is great I love theater it’s super fun it’s not it’s not news and you don’t really generally get sued for doing fake things on stage on Broadway it’s kind of the nature of the business it’s not the nature of our business uh this is not the only problem texts show that guy Mar Hort writing we going to nail this Zachary young mfer and other CNN employees calling him a an a-hole and a bag this is relevant because in a case like this you generally have to prove that they behaved with some malice depending on
whether the court finds Mr Young a public figure and those would be exactly the kind of texts that would suggest there is some and take a look at your screen here producer Michael con said young had a quote punchable face he was asked about this text in his deposition and he did not back down watch um so I paused the video here at like 3 minutes and 8 seconds um and there’s a photograph on the screen do you understand that to be Zachary young I understand that to be Zachary young uh do you think he has a punchable
face yeah so why do you think that probably the smirk in the sunglasses this is not what you would call a good witness for CNN it’s unbelievable the jury awarded Zachary young $5 million in compensatory damages they just this just happened and they were set to give him even more inuitive damages that’s the phase of the trial that they were about to move on to they they found CNN Live they gave him 5 million compensatory and now they are about to debate just how big the punitive damage award would be
when young and CNN entered into a confidential settlement CNN for its part released this statement we remain proud of our journalists and are 100% committed to strong fearless and fair-minded reporting at CNN though we will of course take what useful lessons we can from this case Zachary young joins me now along with his attorney Val fredman here for his first long form interview guys thank you so much for being here um Zachary thank you for your service and um first just tell me how you’re feeling right now with like about
a week to breathe after this whole thing wrapped up well thanks for having us um it it’s been a long road the last three years of you know getting to trial and then of course the two-e trial was quite intense um just got back to Austria on Saturday and my wife and I are still uh trying to decompress and really understand what just happened so we’re we’re definitely very glad that it’s over we’re very happy with the outcome Val can you just put into a perspective how unusual this is to get this kind of defamation award against an
organization like CNN sure I mean we’re trying to track down exactly when the last time it happened was but it seems that a national media organization like CNN has not been held liable for pun damages in the past 50 or 60 years so it’s it’s quite rare and Megan as you touched on in the beginning to do with what needs to be proven to hold a media company to account like that was Zachary deemed a public figure or a limited public figure because you know if so uh CNN would have more protection and when
we when we report on people who are public figures we really can’t be sued for defamation as news people unless we do it we commit erors with what’s called actual malice so what was the standard that the court implied here V so they he they tried but they failed so he was not called a public figure and so to get liability on the underlying count meaning for the jury to say you have to pay him your compensatory damages the 5 million we only have to show negligence but in order to get the punitive damages
award you have to show malice it’s the same standard so the jury when the jury eventually found that CNN should for punitive damages they had to have found that CNN knew what they were publishing was not true or had at minimum substantial doubts as to whether it was true they published anyways despite knowing it was true or probably not true and that they did it with a primary intent to harm Zachary and so the jury had to find both those things and did find both those things in order to hold C un liable for punitive damages wow wow
okay so then that’s when you settled the case and I I’ll get back to Zach to tell the story in a minute but I I’m just kind of interested in the legalities of of it so I’ll stick with youville for a minute um so that’s when you settled the case but you didn’t settle it earlier not because CNN didn’t try to settle it they they did try to settle it but you guys would not settle it so what was your thinking on that because defamation cases are tough you know they are tough um by the time we we we were forced to attend the
court ordered mediation CNN asked the court to force Zach to come in from Vienna in person for that meeting they said they wanted to take it seriously uh but I I got to tell you it wasn’t really legal strategy we we gave Zach advice we told him we thought he had a really strong case the evidence here was overwhelming in our view that CNN had committed defamation had it done so maliciously but it was really Zach that wouldn’t settle he said he had to you know I think he told me there were two things he wanted to accomplish one
he needed to clear his name U because they had slandered him internationally to millions of people and the second is he thought this was a very rare opportunity to kind of expose wrongdoing and Bad actors in the media and just kind of try to course correct a little bit and he he’s a patriot he’s always been a patriot he was a Navy vet he worked for you know the CIA for a long time he’s not supposed to talk about it but it came out at trial and he this was just one more way he was serving his country he I have to say
Zach I uh as a newsp person myself now I I’m not I’m not huge on you know suing news people for defamation of course like it’s scary there but for the grace but this is so egregious I mean I can’t imagine a case in which like I’ve never texted with my producers this way about somebody that we’re reporting on like with such disgust and animous and then gone out with a report that my internal producers were telling me was quote full of holes like Swiss cheese and not even worthy to make the website but they’d
let me say it on the air I’d be scared shitless to actually front a report like that and then when the person sued me to do anything other than completely fall on my sword and say oh my God we got everything wrong I’m deeply sorry to Zach and frankly I probably would have put you on the air to let you tell me to my face in front of my audience how wrong I was that’s that’s truly how I would have handled it had I ever been in such a terrible situation but all you got out of CNN from what I read is and
we’ll we’ll go we’ll do the backstory in a second was like this generic sort of Pamela Brown sitting in for Jake Tapper an aine milk toast correction and generic like we’re sorry is that basically all you had prior to following the lawsuit it is and you know now that I understand more about the legalities I understand why they did it it wasn’t a sincere correction or apology and in fact when we depose all of CNN’s Witnesses more than a dozen including their corporate rep they all uh retracted their apology they said
that they disagreed with it they they were never consulted about it the reporters the editors the CNN corporate rep um and that it was made for legal reasons by lawyers so um that was pretty disturbing to hear increase tariffs on our trade Partners tax cuts and regulation changes there’s a reason why gold is a diversification tactic now more than ever Birch gold is releasing their ultimate guide for gold in the Trump ERA with a forward by Donald Trump Jr to get your free copy along with Birch Gold’s free information kit on
gold text MK to the number 9898 98 here are the facts the national debt continues to increase our interest payments on the national debt continue to increase so gold is an important option and it can be your hedge against a weakened dollar Birch gold can convert an existing Ira or 401K into a tax sheltered Ira in Gold text MK to 9898 98 for your free copy of the ultimate guide for gold in the Trump era there’s no obligation just information with an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau countless five-star reviews and
thousands of happy customers find out more about Birch gold there is a reason so many people love these guys and take all or just a small part of their existing IAS and move them over into gold with Birch text MK to the number 98 9898 today thanks so much for watching if you like what you just saw hit the Subscribe button for more clips and full episodes
