On Monday, Alex Marquardt, CNN Senior Intelligence Correspondent and frequent fill-in anchor at the network, announced that he was leaving his position. Speculation was immediately emerging that this was in connection to the defamation lawsuit brought against CNN, where a jury found the news network liable for defamation and ruled they had to pay tens of millions of dollars in damages. Now, indications are that Marquardt was in fact let go as a result of the suit.
As we covered extensively last year, CNN was sued by Navy veteran Zachary Young over a report on Young’s work as an extraction expert who facilitated the safe release of people from Afghanistan. CNN chose to frame Young’s work as illegal black market activities where he was extorting people to have them safely escape the nation as it fell into Taliban rule. The jury ruled CNN acted errantly and with malice in its false presentation, awarding Young with significant compensatory damages, with the network then negotiating undisclosed punitive compensation.
Marquardt was the reporter on those disputed reports, which ran on programs hosted by Jake Tapper, as well as others at the network. With his announced departure on Monday, Alex made no mention of his future expectations, and this fueled theories that he had been let go, possibly due to the January ruling.
Now comes some confirmation that this may be the case. Oliver Darcy, former CNN media correspondent with his own newsletter these days, reports that he has learned that Marquardt was in fact let go, probably a result of CNN parent company Warner Bros. Discovery making the call. Said to be the result of a WB-D policy of a “post-settlement ethics compliance review, Marquardt, according to Darcy’s sources, reportedly sat for a formal interview regarding the court case, thought at the time to be a formality. But then this resulted in an abrupt firing on Friday, May 30.
The likely reasoning for his removal is the fact that inside of CNN, the reporter incurred no form of reprisals following the lawsuit being filed. He had in fact received a promotion last fall and continued to be a visual presence on the air while also being given frequent hosting assignments. It appears the involvement of legal teams from the parent company provoked the decision to finally send him packing.
A lawyer from Warner Bros. Discovery—the network’s parent company—contacted Marquardt and others involved in the story for an interview. While the lawyer was from corporate, I’m told the review was overseen by CNN’s own legal team. The WBD lawyer was enlisted as a more objective third party. Marquardt didn’t resist. He believed there were no unknowns left in the case. CNN’s lawyers had already examined every message and internal document during discovery. But on Friday, he was called into a meeting with Moseley and a human resources representative. The message was short: he was being dismissed. The reason, he was told, came down to unspecified editorial differences.
Darcy gives his slanted take on things, declaring that Marquardt’s reporting that was at the center of the case had been vetted by CNN’s celebrated “Triad Team”; this is the oversight of news items that needs to be approved by fact-checkers, standards & practices, and legal. Darcy references this process as a way to suggest the original reporting was in fact valid, not as a sign of this touted entity failing in its mission.
As we covered with our initial reports on the case, internal concerns had been present at CNN with Marquardt’s reporting of Young’s activities. Editors from CNN Digital expressed their concerns with the content, stating they felt it was not factually sufficient and they declined to post articles on the network’s website. Later, in an initial deposition, Marquardt answered that he did not find any illegal activity and they did not discover any crimes committed by Zach Young.
Now, five months following the court’s decision, the reporter at the center of this controversy has been relieved of his job. This occurs just as the host of the show that platformed his reporting, Jake Tapper, released a book that is a dark indictment of the news industry, suffering ratings declines as a result. By all appearances, things continue to spiral at the news network that just reached its 45th anniversary.
Editor’s Note: The mainstream media continues to deflect, gaslight, spin, and lie.
Help us continue exposing their grift by reading news you can trust. Join RedState’s VIP and use promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your membership.
