The U.S.Navy veteran who successfully sued CNN for defamation earlier this year continued his crusade against the media on Tuesday when appealing his defamation suit against the Associated Press. A panel of three judges on Florida’s First District Court of Appeal heard arguments from both sides after Zachary Young’s defamation lawsuit against the AP was tossed out last year.
Young believes he was defamed when AP media reporter David Bauder wrote that "Young’s business helped smuggle people out of Afghanistan" when covering the CNN trial in a January 2025 article. The AP’s counsel, Charles Tobin, dismissed the organization’s own style when Judge L.Clayton Roberts said, "It says ‘smuggling’ is an illegal activity."JUDGE TOSSES LATEST DEFAMATION SUITS FROM NAVY VET WHO BEAT CNN, SAYS SOME SEQUELS ‘SHOULD NOT BE MADE’U.S.
Navy veteran Zachary Young settled with CNN for an undisclosed amount after a jury found he was defamed by the network.(Jessica Costescu)The AP Stylebook is widely considered the industry standard for journalists and used in newsrooms throughout the world. "It says, ‘human smuggling’ is an illegal activity, or ‘people smuggling,’ the whole point of defining a term, Your Honor, we do this in our briefs every day, is to use the term consistently from case-to-case moment-to-moment within it as you're walking through a brief," Tobin said. "The AP did not use the terms in its Stylebook," Tobin continued.
"The stylebook… is inapplicable to the circumstances of this case."NAVY VETERAN WHO PROVED CNN DEFAMED HIM SUES ASSOCIATED PRESS, SAYS HE WAS FALSELY PAINTED AS ‘SMUGGLER’Zachary Young believes he was defamed when an AP reporter wrote that his business helped "smuggle" people out of Afghanistan.(Zachary Young )NewsBusters associate editor Nicholas Fondacaro, who has covered Young’s legal plight since the early days of the CNN lawsuit, was baffled by the argument. "Tobin’s argument was eyebrow-raising given th...