An attorney urged jurors on Tuesday to “send a message to the mainstream media” by finding that CNN defamed a security contractor in a 2021 report about Afghan refugees.
Zachary Young is suing the network in Panama City, Fla., alleging that he was falsely portrayed as engaging in an illicit “black market” in the wake of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan by offering to get refugees out the country for $14,500 apiece.
During his opening statement on Tuesday, Young’s attorney, Kyle Roche, argued that CNN’s reporting was “reckless” with the facts, and that the network “set out to destroy Zach’s reputation.”
“They didn’t care about the truth,” he said. “They cared about theater and they cared about ratings.”
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Roche argued that jurors can “change an industry” by sending a message that will be heard by “every news organization in America.”
“Reckless journalism is un-American,” he argued. “It’s dangerous, and if media companies engage in theater in the newsroom, Americans will hold them accountable in the courtroom.”
The trial is being held in a courthouse in Bay County, on the Florida Panhandle. It comes a month after Disney agreed to a $15 million settlement with President-elect Donald Trump to resolve a defamation suit against ABC and George Stephanopoulos. Trump has pledged to “straighten out” the press with additional suits, including one he filed against the Des Moines Register over an errant poll that showed him trailing Kamala Harris in Iowa.
Six jurors were chosen on Monday in the Florida trial.
In his opening statement on Tuesday, CNN’s attorney, Dave Axelrod, argued that the story was accurate, and that its statements about Young relied almost entirely on his own words.
“Every word you’re going to see in CNN’s reporting was true,” Axelrod said. “It was tough. It was fair. And it was accurate.”
He noted that CNN devoted extensive coverage to the plight of refugees in the wake of the withdrawal of U.S. forces.
“It was a disaster,” Axelrod said. “This is a story that we as Americans needed to see. It was a policy failure that left people who were our friends in a dire situation.”
Axelrod said that many Afghans faced desperate fear of retaliation by the Taliban. He argued that Young’s quoted price was “an unbelievably large amount of money” to Afghans.
He also argued that Young saw the chaos in Afghanistan as “nothing more than a way to make money.” He also stressed that the story did not accuse Young of doing anything illegal.
Roche gave a preview of the plaintiff’s case, which will rely heavily on internal messages shared among the CNN team during the preparation of the story. In one message, reporter Alex Marquardt vowed that he is “going to nail that Zachary Young mf-er.” Another CNN employee said the story would present a “punchable face” — that is, Young’s, the attorney said.
Other communications show other CNN employees raising doubts about the story, however, suggesting that it was “full of holes” like “Swiss cheese,” Roche said.
Axelrod countered that the reporters took extensive measures to get as much information as they could from Young, and included his response in the story. He also defended the reporters’ “callous observations” about Young, saying they found his approach to the dire situation offensive.
Roche said that Young, a Navy veteran who later worked for the CIA, successfully extracted 22 women from Afghanistan on behalf of four corporate clients, including Audible and Bloomberg. He said that Young never charged any individual Afghan.
Young made as much $350,000 a year as a security contractor, but Roche argued that his career and reputation were destroyed in the wake of the CNN report.
Roche invoked the memory of Walter Cronkite, the CBS anchor who he said “actually cared about delivering the facts.” He drew a contrast with the modern journalism culture, which he said was focused on “clicks, scandal and drama.”
“You have the opportunity in this trial to move the pendulum back towards sanity in our media,” he said.
The trial is expected to last two weeks.