After CNN was found liable for defamation on Friday, NBC host Tom Llamas brought on NPR media reporter David Folkenflik to survey the damages on Tom Llamas Now on the NBC News Now streaming channel.
Llamas showed words from the CNN text exchanges were Young is referred to with “We’re gonna nail this mf---er” and he’s an “a—hole” and “s---bag” and “what a punchable face.” Then he said “We should mention the CNN producers and reporters did not deny these text messages, but denied that the messages implied that the story was a quote, 'hit piece.'”
It’s like CNN claiming that taking a bat to somebody’s windshield was not, quote, “vandalism.” Llamas then worried that jurors just aren’t knowledgeable enough about professional journalists (like CNN was professional on this story?)
LLAMAS: How do you think these messages were interpreted by a jury that does not work in a newsroom, right? That does not understand how people may talk about people, though I would argue if you're investigating someone, you don't want to be texting these kind of things either.
So we don’t “understand” that professional journalists and their activist sources sound like Mafia dons bragging about nailing people (and even exterminating them). The problem here is that CNN's malice was exposed, in black and white, and since we don't have access to other text messages and emails, there’s no indication this is an outlier, that this isn’t the standard operating procedure. Folkenflik picked up the theme, and then cast suspicion on the jurors being "deeply red" politically:
DAVID FOLKENFLIK: So look, I was actually just talking about this this afternoon with my editor because I think there are ways in which, you know, you have to unpack journalism the way it works, what it's like in the moment for a jury who may be unfamiliar with that, and a jury, in fact, in a deeply red part of the country, the Florida panhandle may be unsympathetic to that.
Not only were there the questions of the texts that you just showed to viewers about the seemingly, you know, kind of enjoyment of it all. At one point, the guy says, I'm going to -- the reporter said, I'm going to get it. Another editor says, I'm going to hold you to that, cowboy. It seems like kind of this outlaw ethos, right? Actually, to my mind, more damaging in watching the trial day after day were the texts in which editors internally expressed misgivings about the story, saying they didn't think it was fully there, that they hadn't nailed down.
In reality, both themes were damaging -- the aggression of Young's attackers and the editors trying to put on the brakes, and failing. You shouldn’t use one set to deflect from the other.
The leftist tilt in all this is casting aspersions on how a jury in a "deeply red" area was demonstrating a political bias...but when a jury in Manhattan makes Trump a "convicted felon," NBC and NPR aren't going to suggest the jurors live in a "deeply blue" city and have a political motivation.
Folkenflik made a similar argument that large media outlets are being sued now as a public-relations strategy, and a political strategy. He implied the media were now settling with Trump (as ABC did after calling him "liable for rape") to "get on Trump's good side, that there are no problems as he ascends to office." As if their reckless journalistic aggression is something they have deeply enjoyed and want to continue.
