CNN Defamation Trial: Jurors Present Brutal Questions About Journalist’s Aggressive Pursuit of Navy Veteran

PANAMA CITY, FLORIDA – The jurors in the high stakes defamation trial v. CNN saved some of its toughest questions for the reporter about its aggressive pursuit of U.S. Navy veteran Zachary Young, the plaintiff in the case.

Young alleges that CNN defamed him in a November 2021 report by correspondent Alex Marquardt that first aired on “The Lead with Jake Tapper,” suggesting that he illegally benefited from desperate people trying to flee Afghanistan after the The Biden administration military retirement, implying that he was involved in “black market” transactions and, as a result, ruined his professional reputation.

Katie Bo Lillis, the intelligence and national security correspondent who collaborated with Marquardt on the story, was bombarded with questions about her conduct in her zealous effort to get Young to collaborate with CNN.

The questions, which jurors submitted in writing, were read aloud to Lillis by Judge William Henry.

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“Do you think Americans are obligated to talk to you (or) CNN?” Henry read the first question.

“No, no one is obligated to talk to us,” Lillis responded. “It is their free decision whether they choose it or not.”

“How far must someone go to not talk to you? Must they talk to you to not talk to you?” The judge read the following question.

“That’s a very good question,” Lillis reacted amusingly.

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After a long pause, Lillis told jurors that he has a “responsibility to the people who are in the story” as well as to “the American public, the American taxpayer, particularly when I write about government activities.”

“In this case, we had someone who could be profiting from the misery of others from a cataclysmically tragic situation in Afghanistan. I felt the biggest priority I had was to keep pushing for answers from Mr. Young, rather than turning away. of finding answers here,” Lillis said. “Because in this case, I was thinking about the Afghans who were trying to leave the country. And I was thinking about the many, many service members and former, you know, agency officers, CIA officers, officers that I knew for whom this was “It’s incredibly personal and incredibly painful, the notion that there will be people who will be left behind.”

Lillis was then asked: “When do you accept that someone does not wish to speak or comment?” to which she replied, “It depends a lot on the context,” adding that she had a “higher priority” to delve deeper into Young’s activities.

The same jury then asked: “Do you lose this right if you express discomfort or evade questions?” Lillis emphasized that anyone has “the right” not to speak to her, but noted that Young initially approached her as a potential client, but that was only after receiving a notification that Lillis had viewed her LinkedIn profile.

“He could have stopped answering any of my questions. He could have completely zoned out. He didn’t do any of those things. He continued to talk to me,” Lillis told jurors.

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One of the jurors referenced an exchange Lillis had with Young, who did not want to be identified in any report, when she told him that speaking off the record would give him the “opportunity to understand what we’re working on… and to present your case to keep your name out of this.”

“The opportunity to present your case to keep your name out of it sounds similar to being guilty until proven innocent,” wrote the jury read aloud by Judge Henry. “Can you clarify how your approach is actually the opposite, innocent until proven guilty?”

“Well, first of all, you know, we’re not a court of law,” Lillis responded. “Just like standards, you know if someone’s conduct is newsworthy, whether it ends up in a news article is not whether it’s illegal or not. In this case, what it comes down to is, you know, whether it should be exposed that someone could be profiting from. of the misery of the Afghans,” adding: “We had enough corroboration in the form of these text messages, essentially, to suggest that there was a reason to ask these questions, and that’s why we continued to ask them, but, you know, we had them.” ., if a case had been filed If there were more here, then we would have backed off. Does that answer the question?

“It was not answered,” Judge Henry said with a smile, then moved on to the next question: “Can you understand, given this new perspective, that your approach might scare someone?” He clarified that it was a continuation of the previous question.

Lillis admitted that hypothetically someone “could get scared by being approached by a journalist,” but refuted the idea in this case since Young was publicly advertising his own services on LinkedIn and that he messaged her first.

“If you think vulnerable people are being taken advantage of, is someone obligated to talk to you?” another juror had asked, to which Lillis responded by reiterating that no one is “forced” to talk to her.

“Do people have the right not to be named in a news story?” asked one juror, perplexing the CNN reporter.

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After a moment of reflection, Lillis said she was struggling with the word “right.”

“I think it is the responsibility of news organizations and journalists like me to think carefully about whether the conduct we are going to expose and the person we are going to name is newsworthy, whether it is in the public interest to know that this conduct is occurring or and that this named person is the one carrying it out,” Lillis said. “And in this case, I firmly believe that bar was met.”

The jury’s final question concerned their judgment of Young when he would go silent or block potential clients once he learned they did not have the financial means to hire him, asking “What do you think is an appropriate way to disengage?” ” Lillis responded by saying that “a simple ‘I can’t help'” would probably be an appropriate response, adding that what Young did “seemed a little harsh to me.”

The trial resumes Thursday and will be broadcast live on Fox News Digital.