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  • 2017-02-17 (xsd:date)
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  • Did a Judge Rule That CNN Is 'Fake News'? (en)
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  • In February 2017, the web site Freedom Daily published a blog post that reported a federal judge had ruled the CNN cable news station was officially fake news: However, a LawNewz article on the lawsuit presented a more straighforward report on the substance and issues of the case: A copy of Judge Evans' 15 February 2017 decision showed that CNN's motion to dismiss Carbone's suit was denied. The 18-page document reviewed the facts of the case as argued by both sides before concluding that Carbone had grounds sufficient to proceed with a defamation claim in the state of Georgia. The decision focused in particular on Carbone's claim that statistics cited in a CNN report potentially misled viewers. The court deemed that CNN's motion to dismiss did not satisfactorily address Carbone's dispute of the way the network had presented their statistics. According to the ruling, Georgia law requires a private figure to prove only that CNN acted with ordinary negligence in his complaint (in contrast to a public figure who would need to demonstrate clear and convincing evidence that CNN acted with actual malice) and that Carbone met the minimum standard for a defamation claim. Accordingly, CNN's motion to dismiss the complaint was denied. Freedom Daily's headline reported a shocking punishment forced on CNN as a result of the ruling, but that claim was never addressed in the body of their article, nor was it supported by the text of the ruling (unless one considers having to contest a lawsuit to be a shocking punishment). The court did not declare CNN's reporting to have been erroneous, examine the overall practices of CNN outside of Carbone's complaint, nor say (or even hint) that the station deals in fake news. The ruling did not even constitute a final judgement in favor of the plaintiff, as it simply established that Carbone had sufficiently proved grounds to proceed with his lawsuit against CNN. As of December 2018, CNN had been unsuccessful in seeking to have the defamation case against them dismissed via an anti-SLAPP motion: (en)
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