After a year, CNN decided to settle with Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann over the latter’s lawsuit claiming that the network had smeared his name.
Fox 19 reported, “CNN agreed Tuesday to settle a lawsuit with Covington Catholic student Nick Sandmann. The amount of the settlement was not made public during a hearing at the federal courthouse in Covington.”
Todd McMurtry and Lin Wood, the attorneys hired by Sandmann, had filed the $275 million lawsuit against CNN in March of last year at the US District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky.
In an interview with Fox News’ Mark Levin last year, Wood said: “CNN was probably more vicious in its direct attacks on Nicholas than The Washington Post.
And CNN goes into millions of individuals’ homes. CNN couldn’t resist the idea that here’s a guy with a young boy, with that Make America Great Again cap on. So they go after him.”
“They really went after Nicholas with the idea that he was part of a mob that was attacking the Black Hebrew Israelites, yelling racist slurs at the Black Hebrew Israelites. Totally false,” Wood continued. “Now you say you’ve seen the tape; if you took the time to look at the full context of what happened that day, Nicholas Sandmann did absolutely nothing wrong. He was, as I’ve said to others, he was the only adult in the room.”
McMurtry told anchor Sandra Smith during another interview with Fox News last year, “Well, what CNN’s tagline is is ‘facts first.’ And what we believe their reporting was in this circumstance was lies first, cover up second, and facts not yet determined by that organization.
So the difference between this lawsuit and the other lawsuit that we have filed is that CNN is a very significant media organization with a much broader reach than, say, the Washington Post. It has Twitter followers of 41 million people. It published four videos.
Nine online articles that were tweeted out. So that’s millions and millions and millions of repetitions of the lies and falsehoods that CNN spread.”
“Well, we’ve talked about the impact on Nicholas Sandmann a number of times and it — it is significant,” McMurtry continued.
“Nicholas Sandmann was a 16-year-old man who had a perfect reputation. He was loved by his parents, respected at his school, and had many good friends at Covington Catholic High School. So he was a person that was doing very well in life, and due to his strong character, he still is.
But nevertheless, his character has now been determined by the lies issued by CNN. So the facts were not first, the lies were.”
Replaced!