Setback for CNN’s Anderson Cooper as Judge Lets Surgeon’s Embarrassing Defamation Lawsuit Move Forward

A Florida surgeon, Dr. Michael D. Black, is getting a chance to show CNN and its biggest star, Anderson Cooper, defamed him a decade ago.Dr. Black alleges CNN defamed him. Mr. Cooper’s eponymous program aired a report in 2015 on “surgeries gone wrong” that said the pediatric open-heart surgery program at St. Mary’s Medical Center in the Palm Beach area had a death rate that was three times the national average. Dr. Black, who oversaw the program, said the network’s report was false because it did not account for “risk-adjusted” data.A three-judge panel on Florida’s Fourth District Circuit Court of Appeal overturned a circuit judge’s decision to grant summary judgment to CNN. Mr. Cooper is one of the defendants listed in the lawsuit.The judge who penned the opinion, Jeffrey Kuntz, said, “We express no opinion on the merits of Dr. Black’s claim. But Dr. Black presented evidence alleging CNN and its employees published a story implying Dr. Black’s allegedly deficient performance caused babies to die.”“The evidence is such that a reasonable jury could return a verdict for Dr. Black,” Judge Kuntz said. The case is an example of CNN getting in trouble when it tries to do original reporting and investigations outside its core business of live news and opinion programming focused on Washington. The network faced similar embarrassment last year over a botched investigation it did of an American contractor in Afghanistan. CNN’s mishaps in investigative journalism go back as far as 1998, when the network had to retract a story it aired alleging use of nerve gas by U.S. troops in Vietnam. In 2017, three of its top investigative journalists were forced to resign after a botched CNN.com article about the Trump campaign and Russia.In the case of Dr. Black, the court filing notes that ahead of the report, CNN journalists Elizabeth Cohen and John Bonifield consulted with an “expert,” Dr. Jeffrey Jacobs, who had warned against using “raw” mortality data. In one email, Dr. Jacobs advised that such information is “essentially meaningless.”When St. Mary’s refused to hand over mortality data because it said it was not publicly available information, CNN reporters decided to calculate their own mortality rate, which they said was 12.5 percent between 2011 and 2013, as they noted that six patients out of 48 had died. The CEO of St. Mary’s warned CNN that its report was “inaccurate” because it “does not represent all cases and/or procedures performed as part of the program.” The letter also noted that the Society for Thoracic Surgeons gave St. Mary’s a “two-star ranking,” which it has given to “nearly two-thirds of similar programs in the United States.”On June 1, 2015, CNN.com published a report by Ms. Cohen and Mr. Bonifield that relied on “raw” mortality data from the hospital and said St. Mary’s kept its death rate “secret.” The report noted that the hospital’s CEO said raw mortality data “does not give proper context for the complexity and severity of each case, which could potentially lead to providing misleading information to consumers.” It also noted that the hospital “says CNN is wrong about the program’s death rate, but refuses to saywhat it considers to be the right death rate.”That same day, Mr. Cooper aired a segment on the story and had Ms. Cohen on his program. Mr. Cooper said the network’s reporting found that St. Mary’s program was not operating on babies “safely.”Ms. Cohen said the hospital “keeps its death rate a secret,” but that CNN did its own calculations.“CNN was able to calculate the death rate for open heart surgeries as 12.5 percent, more than three times the national average of 3.3 percent,” Ms. Cohen said. Mr. Cooper said the story was an “incredible story.”Two days later, CNN.com published an article about a “disturbing development,” that another baby had died. And two days after that report, Mr. Cooper said on his show that federal officials wanted to “make sure that people are not unnecessarily exposed to harm” at St. Mary’s. CNN has sought to defend its reporting by stating that the hospital did not provide “risk-adjusted” data. However, Dr. Black says the hospital did provide its “two-star ranking” and the network “just ignored” it. The network says the hospital only provided the words “two-star ranking.”In a potentially damaging discovery for CNN, one text shows that Ms. Cohen asked, “I know we never specifically asked for risk adjusted data, but did we ever ask for anything general like for ex[ample] to see their STS report?”“No,” Mr. Bonifield said. While the circuit judge found that the dispute over “raw” mortality data was not sufficient for a defamation case to proceed, Judge Kuntz said, “We believe a trial on the merits is required to decide whether CNN’s use of a calculated, raw mortality rate to imply babies were dying because of Dr. Black is sufficient to satisfy a defamation claim.”The decision to let Dr. Black’s case proceed comes months after a Florida-based jury, in the Afghanistan contractor case, found CNN liable for defamation against a Navy veteran, Zachary Young. The lawsuit focused on a 2021 CNN report that accused Mr. Young of operating on the black market and charging “exorbitant fees” while evacuating Afghans from Afghanistan after America’s chaotic withdrawal. Mr. Young says the allegations are false and that he was working for corporate clients to evacuate their personnel from a conflict zone.In January, a jury awarded Mr. Young $4 million for lost earnings and $1 million for personal damages. Before the jury could decide on punitive damages – which could have been far larger – the parties reached an undisclosed settlement. The reporter behind that story, Alex Marquardt, the “chief national security correspondent,” was quietly fired a few months later. As CNN faces yet another defamation lawsuit, the network is facing financial difficulties and is expected to undergo a round of harsh layoffs as it is, currently, set to be spun off from its parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery. After the split, CNN will be overseen by Gunnar Wiedenfels, an executive who has developed a reputation as a ruthless cost-cutter. The financial difficulties and expected cuts are leading to increased scrutiny of the enormous salaries paid to the network’s talent, even as it routinely comes in a distant third in the ratings, and as programs hosted by younger, less-known, lesser-paid journalists have audiences comparable to Mr. Cooper’s.Mr. Cooper, a member of the wealthy Vanderbilt family who has amassed a multi-million dollar real estate portfolio, is believed to earn an eye-popping $18 million a year. Such a large salary for a cable news anchor is not unheard of; however, compensation packages are usually given to anchors with larger audiences. Five years ago, Mr. Cooper was routinely garnering a much larger audience than he does today. In 2020, his show averaged 1.89 million total viewers with 498,000 in the key demo. However, his audience has dwindled, and in July, his program on average drew in 573,000 viewers.Despite the financial woes, WBD may not wind up going through with its plan to break up, as the chief executive of Skydance, David Ellison, is preparing a bid to buy the company, according to the Wall Street Journal. In August, Mr. Ellison finalized his $8.4 billion acquisition of Paramount Global and its subsidiary CBS News. The deal appeared to be delayed as President Trump sued CBS News for $20 billion over its edit of Vice President Harris’ October 2024 interview with “60 Minutes.” (Mr. Cooper is also a correspondent for “60 Minutes.”) Layoffs are expected to hit CBS News, but Mr. Ellison is also pledging to clean up the network and address longstanding complaints of a left-wing bias at the network. If he succeeds in buying WBD, it is expected that he would also try to make changes at CNN to address its anti-Trump coverage. CNN declined to comment.

Setback for CNN’s Anderson Cooper as Judge Lets Surgeon’s Embarrassing Defamation Lawsuit Move Forward

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