Largely lost in the coverage of witness testimony, breaking news of the liability verdict against CNN, and the subsequent settlement on punitive damages, was how CNN’s lead counsel David Axelrod (not to be confused with the CNN commentator of the same name) had repeatedly lied to Judge William Scott Henry and was dressed down in front of the court and streamed around the world because of it. At one point, Judge Henry announced that Axelrod’s “credibility with me … is about none” and forced him to apologize to Plaintiff and Navy veteran Zachary Young for baselessly suggesting he was the liar.
One of Axelrod’s biggest lies with the most consequences for his defense of CNN was a mischaracterization of interactions he had with the media pool in the room; falsely suggesting to Judge Henry that we had all “quickly consented” to not capturing images of their star witness, Ralf Otto.
Otto flew in from German to testify on behalf of CNN but didn’t want his face shown out of a non-specific fear that it could harm his charity work in sensitive locations. Despite not doing through the proper channels well in advance to have his identity protected, on January 14, Axelrod falsely claimed to Judge Henry that he got the consent of the entire media pool present to not show Otto’s face:
It’s your discretion to prohibit media coverage of a particular trial participant. We are not asking for you to close the courtroom. We're not asking for you to stop the cameras. We're not asking you to stop the video. What we're doing is asking for actually a very limited, very limited use of your discretion. And that would simply be allow the cameras to show the rest of the courtroom, allow the audio to go forward and simply rule that the media in the court and the live stream should not capture Mr. Otto's face. Indeed, the media that's here quickly consented that that would be fine with them.
But that was not true.
(...)
***The complete post is on NewsBusters***
