The MRC's Defamation Flip-Flop

After virtually ignoring Dominion's defamation lawsuit against its buddies at Fox News, the Media Research Center went all in on hyping a lawsuit against its enemies at CNN.

The Media Research Center almost entirely ignored Dominion’s lawsuit against Fox News for promoting never-proven claims about election fraud caused by the company’s voting systems. Instead, its writers — chiefly Tim Graham — whined that outlets like CNN covered the lawsuit, though he did surprisingly concede that “whatever good faith [right-wing media have] built up with people who are not as conservative could just get wiped out when the big liberal media can all unite and show that they have the same regard for the truth that Donald Trump has.” Of course, Graham followed that with whining that the scandal “enables Oliver Darcy and company to mount their high horses and suggest that Fox News has never, ever been a news channel” and denying any MRC role in building up Fox News as a right-wing propaganda machine. That was followed by Nicholas Fondacaro smearing a Fox News employee who stepped forward to claim she was pressured by Fox News lawyers to lie during testimony for the Dominion lawsuit as a “disgruntled” liar.

Fast forward several months, and Fondacaro and the MRC was singing a different tune about a defamation lawsuit against a different media outlet — this time, the outlet in question is CNN, the MRC’s mortal enemy. Fondacaro wrote in a June 14 post:

On Wednesday, three judges with the First District Court of Appeal for the State of Florida ruled that Plaintiff Zachary Young had sufficiently provided enough evidence to the court that they could proceed with his defamation suit against CNN for punitive damages. The network allegedly, knowingly lied about his security consulting company and their work amid President Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. Jake Tapper, one of CNN’s presidential debate moderators was one of the journalists at the center of it all.

The defamation suit stemmed from a segment on CNN’s The Lead with Jake Tapper about Young’s company Nemex Enterprises Inc. and the prices they were allegedly charging to get people out of Afghanistan. Tapper led into the segment by painting an image of “black market” hustlers who charged “exorbitant fees” taking advantage of desperate people:

[…]

A NewsBusters investigation found that CNN has since deleted the segment in question from their CNN Transcripts archive page for the November 11, 2021 episode of The Lead. There’s no note about the missing segment.

CNN correspondent Alex Marquardt singled out Young’s company, not mentioning any others known to be working in-country to get people out.

Fondacaro didn’t mention that CNN issued an apology for the report four months later per Young’s request, and that the story was taken off the website; CNN also stated that “At the time of its reporting, CNN knew little about Young’s financials, his model, or whether he’d successfully evacuated anyone because whenever anyone [including CNN] asked Young to explain his business, he obfuscated, behaved unprofessionally, lied, and hid.”

In a June 24 post, Fondacaro worked with Young’s lawyer to hype the case and help him see dollar signs:

The case may not be as well known (yet), but CNN could be facing a defamation liability rivaling or exceeding the $787 million Fox News paid out to Dominion Voting Systems. NewsBusters recently reported on Florida’s First District Court of Appeals affirming that plaintiff Zachary Young could seek punitive damages, in addition to economic and emotional damages, from the Cable News Network in a civil trial after they allegedly defamed him regarding his work in getting people out of Afghanistan. The total could near or exceed $1 billion.

For that outcome to be remotely in the cards, Young needed to prove malice and according to the ruling, he’s done exactly that. “Young sufficiently proffered evidence of actual malice, express malice, and a level of conduct outrageous enough to open the door for him to seek punitive damages,” Judge L. Clayton Roberts wrote in the court’s ruling.

[…]

In an interview with NewsBusters, Vel Freedman, the lawyer representing Young, said that “everyone makes mistakes” but what CNN’s messages showed was a “systemic problem” inside the network. He added that their internal mechanism for accountability had “clearly failed” and opened themselves to “massive, massive liability.”

Freedman told NewsBusters that his client had lost between $40-60 million in economic opportunity over the course of his now-damaged career as a security contractor since people in the field no longer wanted to work with him. If a jury awarded his client for emotional damages, the upper end could be as high as $600 million. The court recognizing the malice and outrageous conduct by CNN, effectively removed the cap on punitive damages in the State of Florida.

All of that meant CNN could be facing upwards of $1 billion in total damages.

From there, Fondacaro made it clear he would be colluding with Young’s lawyers to push biased “reporting” promoting his side of the story and denigrating CNN. He cranked out a series of posts to further that narrative:

• Do They Know ‘What Words Mean?’ Judge Grills CNN’s Lawyer in Defamation Hearing

• ‘Jackass With a Microphone’: Experts React to CNN Sued for Defamation (those “experts” included a witness for Young and Erik Prince, founder of the notorious private military company Blackwater)

• CNN Attempting to Block Tapper Deposition — and Destroying Evidence?

• EXCLUSIVE: CNN Journo Admits No Evidence of Criminality in Defamation Deposition

• EXCLUSIVE: CNN Refusing to Turn Over Their Journalist Conduct Guidelines in Defamation Case

• EXCLUSIVE: CNN Asks Court for Meeting to BEG for Defamation Settlement

• CNN Cites Taliban’s SHARIA LAW for Their Innocence in $1 Billion Defamation Suit

• EXCLUSIVE: CNN Receives Major Blow from Court in Defamation Case

• EXCLUSIVE: Defamation Judge Says He Has ‘Hard Time Believing’ CNN’s Jake Tapper

• Scathing Reply to CNN’s Sharia Defense: ‘Masterclass in Absurdity and Desperation’ (the reply was from Young, hardly an objective source)

• Defamation Judge Pushes Back on CNN’s Use of Sharia Law for Defense

• Warner Bros. Discovery to Be Subpoenaed as Part of CNN Defamation Case

• Off to Trial: CNN’s Defamation Settlement Offer Gets REJECTED (Fondacaro helped Young whine that he had to fly to the U.S. from Austria to give his deposition since, allegedly, “Young suffers from pain in his legs when he sits for a long time.”)

Fondacaro rarely reached out to CNN for comment to the degree that he enthusiastically quoted Young’s lawyers, and published only one response from that wasn’t taken from court records. Clearly CNN knew that Fondacaro had an agenda and couldn’t be trusted to report fairly — ironically, this is a complaint he and the rest of the MRC routinely hurl against reporters in non-right-wing media. Fondacaro did not tell his readers that Young refused to cooperate with CNN before the story. Then again, being fair and balance is not his agenda here — smearing CNN is.

Fondacaro continued his anti-CNN attack in a Sept. 24 post:

The legal representation CNN has relied on to handle the $1 billion defamation suit against them for the last two years may have been benched on Monday. According to filings exclusively obtained by NewsBusters, CNN has retained the services of law firm Ballard Spahr LLP out of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to represent them in the Panama City, Florida case.

According to two filings (one for each lawyer), CNN has brought on Dave Axelrod and Joe Bailey. They’re with the same law firm that CNN retained to handle their appeal of the punitive damages ruling that opened them up to possibly paying damages approaching or surpassing $1 billion.

Fondacaro’s hyping of a $1 billion lawsuit is purely speculative and not even what Young has demanded, so he’s engaging in dishonest journalism by portraying it otherwise.

Fondacaro demonstrated that his anti-CNN work here is dishonest and biased in an Oct. 14 post:

According to court documents exclusively obtained by NewsBusters, CNN has apparently requested the court to seal mentions and quotes from their journalistic standards, effectively barring them from being viewed by the public in the $1 billion defamation suit against the Cable News Network.

Hiding their journalistic standards from the people who are supposed to trust them as a news source is the exact opposite of what organizations like the Associated Press and The New York Times, which intentionally make theirs publicly available.

Fondacaro did not offer to make the MRC’s journalistic standards available — perhaps because it doesn’t have any, which allows him to get away with defaming Hostin.

Fondacaro engaged in more dishonesty in an Oct. 30 post headlined “Defamation Hearing: CNN Says ‘Half-Ass’ Reporting Should Be Protected,” which began:

In a pre-Halloween hearing in the $1 billion defamation suit against them, on Wednesday, CNN tried to bring their Sharia law defense back from the grave. Judge William Scott Henry of Florida’s 14th Circuit Court called it “a circular argument” that wanted pity for the Afghanis while implying they were criminals for escaping the Taliban. The network’s lawyer ultimately argued that “half-ass” reporting should be constitutionally protected and not subject to a defamation suit.

But CNN never described its reporting as “half-ass” — the judge in the case did that. That tells us that the judge appears to be biased against CNN, but Fondacaro won’t tell you that lest it blow up his narrative. He went on to chortle that “They did have a good laugh over being able to say ‘half-ass’ in the courtroom.”

Fondacaro’s blatant bias — driven by his ethically questionable collusion with Young’s lawyers — continued in future stories he wrote (which continued to dishonestly portray that $1 billion claim as factual instead of highly speculative):

• FL Judge Clears Way for Plaintiff Suing CNN to Subpoena Financial Docs

• ‘Bridge Too Far’: Defamation Judge Throws Out CNN’s Sharia Law Defense

• He’s TOO GOOD: CNN Wants Expert Witness Kicked Off Defamation Case

• CNN Is Trying to Hide Reporter’s Promotion, Raise from Defamation Jury

• Jake Tapper Refused to Answer Questions in Defamation Deposition

• CNN Doesn’t Want Tapper Questioned About Other Defamation Settlements

• Navy Veteran Suing CNN for Defamation Scores Big Wins as Trial Looms

• CNN Accused of Misleading Court on Discloser of Financial Documents in Defamation Suit

• ‘Too Speculative’: Judge Axes CNN Witness’s Claims Ahead of Defamation Trial

Fondaro showed even more anti-CNN hate in cheering an Oct. 20 post on Young’s counsel and the judge sticking it to CNN:

Following the $787 million defamation settlement between Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems in 2023, CNN did a lot of gloating and spiking the ball as they used it as a cudgel to attack the credibility of their cable news rival. But that celebration seems to have come back to bite them as U.S. Navy veteran and Plaintiff Zachary Young won a motion, on Thursday, to cite CNN’s coverage as evidence that CNN supposedly took the possibility of defamation seriously, in his upcoming $1 billion defamation trial.

In a filing on Monday, Young’s lead counsel, Vel Freedman explained the importance of examining CNN’s coverage of the Fox News settlement:

If CNN recognized the significance of the Dominion settlement as a cautionary tale and yet still chose to defame Young, that fact demonstrates the insufficiency of prior monetary amounts in deterring CNN’s misconduct. Such evidence illuminates the severity of CNN’s disregard for journalistic standards, underscores it knowingly undertook risk for clicks and viewers, and bolsters the argument that punitive award is necessary to deter CNN and others from future defamation.

Freedman also noted that in reporting on the settlement, Jake Tapper (one of the CNN journalists partially responsible for putting CNN in hot water) “made these statements as a CNN agent acting within the scope of his employment. The statement is probative because it is CNN’s acknowledgement of proper journalistic standards.”

We’ll keep this line of argument in mind for the inevitable defamation lawsuit Hostin (and possibly others) will file against Fondacaro and his employer.

Trial date nears

As the trial date approached, Fondacaro served up a Jan. 2 post offering his highly biased preview:

After two years of litigation, days worth of time spent in a litany of hearings and deposition testimonies, and boat loads of money spent on lawyers, the trial in the $1 billion defamation suit against CNN is set to begin this Monday, January 6. A lot has happened over the last several months as arguments shifted, witnesses axed, and rulings were made by Judge Williams Scott Henry. So now’s the perfect time to look back at those developments and examine how things stand ahead of the opening arguments.

The alleged defamation stemmed from a November 11, 2021 episode of The Lead with Jake Tapper where Tapper led into the segment by painting an image of a “black market” hustler who charged “exorbitant fees” taking advantage of desperate people trying to leave Afghanistan following President Biden disastrous withdrawal:

[…]

A NewsBusters investigation found that CNN had since deleted the segment in question from their CNN Transcripts archive page for the show, and there was no note about the missing segment.

Again, Fondacaro is being deceitful by calling this a “$1 billion defamation suit” — he merely quoted Young’s lawyer throwing that number out in speculation.

Fondacaro went on to put an heavy anti-CNN spin on pre-trial activities by hyping how “As the case proceeded through the summer and into the fall, things just got worse for CNN.” His wild anti-CNN spin continued (with the help fo YOung;s lawyers, of course):

In early December, Young scored several legal victories in a pair of orders obtained by NewsBusters. Among them were affirmations that punitive damages would still be on the table for a jury to potentially award Young, CNN’s “retraction” of the story wasn’t good enough, Young’s expert witnesses would remain as part of his case, Young did not take money from the Afghans he was helping to evacuate, and he did nothing illegal.

In mid-December and on January 2, just days before the trial was set to begin, Judge Henry affirmed that Young’s counsel from Freedman Normand Friedland LLP would be permitted to bring up CNN’s gloating about Fox News’s settlement with Dominion Voting Systems. They argued it was evidence that they knew and respected the possible threat of a defamation suit.

CNN did get some victories of their own in the run up to the trial. They managed to dodge a request for sanctions after they were accused of misleading the court on disclosing financial discovery documents. They also won on keeping certain documents and testimonies redacted.

In comments made to NewsBusters back in June, Young’s lead counsel, Vel Freedman made it clear that that there wouldn’t be a settlement before the trial began. He told NewsBusters there was “zero chance this case gets stopped before trial” and that the goal was to “take CNN to task.”

Adding: “CNN claims to be the ‘most trusted name in news,’ but their internal documents show that the only thing you can ‘trust’ CNN to do, is ignore the facts, push an agenda, and hurt innocent people. We’re looking forward to trial.”

Fondacaro made no effort to obtain comment from CNN to balance out his article — then again, he’s not a real reporter and he’s not being paid to be fair and balanced. He and his employer have actively rooted for the destruction of CNN for years, and this is just another part of that biased campaign.

Fondcaro spent a Jan. 6 post whining that a more journalistically minded organization weighed in on the trial, complete with a partisan sneer at the reporter who wrote it:

Overly lauded NPR media reporter David Folkenflik finally discovered the $1 billion defamation suit against CNN on the eve of the start of the trial, Sunday. While trying to massage the facts in CNN’s favor, Folkenflik huffed about the venue for the trial and injected President-elect Trump into the case for no reason. He also completely omitted CNN’s embarrassing attempt to use Taliban Sharia Law as their shield and other key details.

Folkenflik opened his piece titled “CNN goes on trial over its report alleging ‘black market’ for Afghan rescues” by taking his own sniping shots at Navy veteran and Plaintiff Zachary Young for charging money for dangerous work in a war zone: “CNN reported that a security consultant was among those offering to evacuate them — for a price — as part of an investigation into claims of ‘black market’ rescue operations.”

Even though Young’s success with evacuating two dozen women sponsored by companies (including Audible and Bloomberg) has never been a disputed point in court, Folkenflik suggested that success had been a subject of debate:

[…]

He appeared to be priming the pump to blame a possible CNN loss on the location of the trial rather than the facts of the case.

Last May, Fondacaro suggested that Donald Trump didn’t receive the “fair trial” he was entitled to; the MRC also published a column by Cal Thomas arguing that Trump didn’t get a fair trial because his “jury pool drawn from a city that voted overwhelmingly for Biden.” So Fondacaro is complaining that CNN may use the same arguments Trump used. He then whined that Folkenflik wouldn’t parrot his anti-CNN propaganda and declared he wanted NPR destroyed because of that:

While Folkenflik did mention the damaging internal CNN messages that were unearthed in discovery that showed a hostile attitude toward Young, he never mentioned that two courts and four judges had determined they were evidence of possible “actual malice.”

However, he did conspicuously omit CNN’s attempt to cite Taliban Sharia law as how they could get away with calling Young a criminal. It was an argument that was thrown out by Judge Henry.

There was also no mention of CNN embarrassingly ditching their entire legal team and hiring new lawyers after a string of defeats. And he parroted CNN’s ridiculous complaint that Young “refused to cooperate with CNN’s reporting efforts” as if the network had any formal authority to force anyone to talk to them.

This bias by omission to obfuscate for CNN is just another reason to #DefundNPR.

By this time, Fondacaro had traveled to Florida to cover the trial (read: spread anti-CNN propaganda) on the MRC’s dime. In another Jan. 6 post, he cheered that several prospective jurors hate the media as much as he does:

After over six hours, Day One of the $1 billion defamation trial against CNN wrapped with a successful construction of the jury that would be hearing the case over the next two weeks in Panama City, Florida. Made up of six jurors and two alternatives, the jury is a mix of six women and two men. At one time, one of them worked at an ABC News affiliate and another who works as a military contractor with the Department of Defense; both occupations have ties to this case.

The pool of prospective jurors was over 40-people strong; several of which were openly hostile and disapproving of the news media industry and weren’t shy about letting CNN’s legal team know it.

Jury selection started hot with prospective Juror One telling the court that he would not be able to be impartial in the case because they strongly disliked the media.

Prospective Juror Two told the court that despite being a former employee for an ABC News affiliate, they could be an impartial juror. When asked by Vel Freedman, lead counsel for Navy veteran and Plaintiff Zachary Young, if they’d hesitate to issue a massive punitive damages judgement to “send a message” to CNN, no one raised their hand, including juror two.

When asked directly by Freedman, Juror Two said they “absolutely” could send a message to CNN and the rest of the media via a massive punitive damages judgement.

[…]

Prospective Juror 23 was arguably the most blunt with their distaste for the media. He told the court then couldn’t be impartial because he holds the opinion that “media outlets think they can say whatever they want” and then “pretend to be the victim when they’re called on it.”

When Sanborn asked the jurors if they had ever heard CNN be accused of spreading fake news, from the perspective of this author, about 6-7 prospective jurors raised their hands, many of those also raised their hand to indicate they wouldn’t let that sway them. And when Sanborn asked whether they believed CNN’s political coverage was biased, enough showed receptive to the notion that Sanborn had to tell them that the case didn’t involve politics.

A sizable swath of the pool was likely ruled out because several of them knew each other in some way; whether knowing them directly or sending their kids to the same school were common examples in those instances.

Fondacaro did not indicate whether any of those anti-media jurors made it onto the jury. If they did, it seems that CNN has a basis for appeal of an adverse ruling. A real reporter would have reported that, but that’s not Fondacaro is — he’s a right-wing activist who’s getting paid to do axe-grinding against CNN on Brent Bozell’s behalf.

And there’s more to come…