Project Veritas’s lawsuit accusing CNN of publicizing a false statement that Twitter banned Project Veritas for spreading misinformation has been revived, with an appeals court ruling the nonprofit journalism group has plausibly alleged defamation.
Twitter in 2021 banned Project Veritas for sharing private information without consent after the group posted a video showing the residence of a Facebook official. Ana Cabrera, a CNN employee, shared the development on Twitter. A CNN article written by Brian Fung also detailed what had transpired.
Four days later, on a CNN program, Cabrera said that “We’re starting to see companies cracking down to try to stop the spread of misinformation and to hold some people who are spreading it accountable.” She noted the ban on Project Veritas before saying “this is part of a much broader crackdown, as we mentioned, by social media giants that are promoting misinformation.”
A U.S. district judge in 2022 turned away a suit brought by Project Veritas over the comments and CNN’s failure to retract them. He said the remarks were substantially true because their effect on the audience was similar to the effect that would have come if CNN had discussed the actual reason Twitter banned Project Veritas.
“Cabrera accused Veritas of substantially different behavior than that in which Veritas engaged. Under New York law, such a statement is not substantially true,” U.S. Circuit Judge Elizabeth L. Branch wrote for the unanimous three-judge panel that was assigned the case. “Veritas committed one infraction; CNN accused it of a completely different one.”
Project Veritas has offered sufficient evidence to overcome CNN’s motion to dismiss the case at this stage, Branch said, when the allegations in the complaint are taken as true.
The district court did not decide whether Cabrera’s remarks were done with actual malice, a requirement for state defamation claims under court interpretations of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment.
Cabrera’s social media post and Fung’s article show that Cabrera was aware her statements on-air were probably false, the panel said.
Judges Andrew Brasher and Ed Carnes joined in the ruling.
Carnes said in a concurring opinion that “I never thought I’d see a major news organization downplaying the importance of telling the truth in its broadcast” and noted that CNN outside the case repeatedly emphasizes its dedication to truth. Its mission statement, for instance, says that “we are truth-seekers and story tellers.”
The decision reversed the lower court ruling and remanded the case back to the court for proceedings consistent with the new decision.
A lawyer representing CNN did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.
