CNN Uses Defamation Case to Protect Its Journalistic Standards From Public Scrutiny

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.

As NewsBusters previously reported on August 13, CNN was ordered to turn over their journalistic conduct and social media guidelines to Plaintiff and U.S. Navy veteran Zachary Young. CNN was given 14 days to turn over both sets of guidelines, which they had been refusing to do, arguing that fact discovery was already closed.

In a previous filing, Young’s lead counsel Vel Freedman of Freedman Normand Friedland LLP told the court that “CNN also objected to producing the journalist conduct guidelines because the request was somehow unduly burdensome, vague, overbroad, and the seeks commercially sensitive or privileged information.”

The court appeared to meet both parties halfway. In ordering them to be turned over, citations of the journalistic conduct guidelines needed to be redacted in publicly available documentation, which results in filings that look like Swiss cheese (see below).

But even with those redactions, there appears to be enough for the public to put the pieces together and see that CNN reporter Alex Marquardt, and those who worked on the story, ignored their own guidelines on how to put a story together:

-CNN’s guidelines state that “[Redacted].” But Marquardt made an on-camera phone call to Young that he knew Young was unlikely to answer, and when he did not answer – as anticipated – laughingly declared it [Redacted]. The footage was not disclosed as a recreation, [Redacted].

-CNN’s guidelines caution [Redacted]. But CNN did not hesitate to accuse Young of operating on an illegal “black market,” with no evidence. [Redacted].

They seemingly broke guidelines in approaching a story with a predetermined outcome:

-According to CNN’s guidelines, [Redacted]. But as described here, when it came to Plaintiff’s, CNN’s employees sought to advance a specific, predetermined, and false narrative rather than to objectively report facts. Marquardt even ignored potential leads – people that had actually arranged for payment to evacuate – because their [Redacted]. [Redacted].

-CNN’s guidelines warn that reporters should [Redacted]. In this case, CNN employees’ grossly unprofessional internal communications confirm that they had a predetermined goal for the story: to “nail” Young, something other CNN employees said they would “hold” Marquardt to.

The story about Young also didn’t appear to go through a rigorous editorial screening process:

-[Redacted]. But as Trimble put it, the Young story was [Redacted].

-CNN’s standards provide that [Redacted]. CNN’s guidelines also emphasize that [Redacted]. But there is not a shred of evidence that the chyrons included in the Segment – including the one branding Young a “black Market” criminal – were ever scrutinized or validated.

Nor did CNN appear to follow their own rules for giving a subject ample time to respond to a negative story they were publishing about them, and Marquardt seemed to buck at least one editor to make sure his story got to air:

-CNN’s guidelines state, [Redacted]. Here, CNN not only failed to allow Young sufficient time to comment on the story, but allowed its own reporters to present a biased (and incorrect) narrative without even verification of accuracy, let alone a counternarrative. When a CNN editor attempted, fruitlessly, to impose any sort of controls on the process, Marquardt became [Redacted] and took steps to bypass that editor’s input.

The filing argues that this apparent evidence of a CNN reporter blowing through their journalistic conduct guidelines was added evidence that could be helpful to a jury determining if CNN was liable for defamation.

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Conclusion:

The revelations in the court documents about CNN’s apparent disregard for their own journalistic standards raise serious questions about the network’s credibility as a news source. By hiding their guidelines from the public and allegedly ignoring them in the case of Zachary Young, CNN’s reputation as a reliable source of information is called into question. It remains to be seen how this will impact the ongoing defamation suit against CNN, but these findings certainly cast a shadow over the network’s integrity. As consumers of news, it is important to hold media organizations accountable for upholding ethical standards in journalism to ensure the dissemination of accurate and unbiased information.