Anderson Cooper's deposition was released unsealed in a defamation suit against CNN from a heart surgeon. Not a good look for Cooper or CNN. Puck Obtains Anderson Cooper Deposition in Multi-Million Dollar Defamation Case Against CNN After Court Clerk Forgets to Seal It https://www.mediaite.com/news/puck-...nst-cnn-after-court-clerk-forgets-to-seal-it/ Puck’s Eriq Gardner obtained the transcript of Anderson Cooper’s deposition in a multi-million dollar defamation lawsuit filed against CNN, and discovered a number of interesting revelations about the behind-the-scenes operations of the cable news network. “I got my hands on Cooper’s sealed deposition, a transcript stretching several hundred pages that provides details about CNN’s newsgathering policies and its star anchor’s sensitivities,” wrote Gardner. The deposition was supposed to be filed under seal, but due to an error by the clerk of court, it was filed in the publicly-accessible court docket. The deposition was taken for a lawsuit filed in 2016 by Dr. Michael Black, a heart surgeon in West Palm Beach, against CNN and the network’s chief medical correspondent Dr. Elizabeth Cohen for a report on infant deaths at St. Mary’s Medical Center after pediatric heart procedures. The report was both posted online on CNN.com on June 15, 2015 with the headline “Secret deaths: CNN finds high surgical death rate for children at a Florida hospital,” as well as being covered during Cooper’s evening television program, AC360. Gardner summed up the report as presenting “an eye-catching statistic that Black alleges is deeply flawed and dishonest,” by calling the hospital’s mortality rate for infants having open-heart surgery “three times the national average.” The doctor was claiming that “experts had repeatedly warned CNN that its methodology effectively cherry-picked data by focusing only on the highest-risk procedures, and that CNN ignored these warnings,” Gardner wrote, describing Black’s argument as saying there was “no statistically significant difference” between what CNN called “secret deaths” at St. Mary’s and the national average. After the CNN report, St. Mary’s closed its pediatric cardiac surgery program. Black is complaining of damage to his career and reputation, including harassment and threats he received as a result of CNN’s reporting. One key issue in the litigation is what a jury will be allowed to hear about CNN’s internal fact-checking processes for vetting stories known as “The Triad,” and Cooper was subjected to multiple questions about this system and how it affected reporting. “The network’s most adventurous journalism is reviewed rigorously prior to publication by a triumvirate of senior editors, Standards & Practices employees, and company attorneys,” wrote Gardner, and described testimony from Cooper and other CNN staffers about their reliance on this system: Cooper testified that two of his prior employers, ABC and Channel One, didn’t have a system quite like this, and that it gave him confidence in CNN’s journalism. So much confidence, in fact, that Cooper said he wouldn’t interfere or take liberties with reporting that had come to him pre-vetted. “My getting involved with [the review] will only gum up the works because so many eyes had looked at it,” he told Locke in January, adding on the second day of questioning that the system impacts how he interacts with those who appear on his show. “Normally, I would just ask the question that I’m interested in about something, and the reporter wouldn’t know in advance what I’m asking, and they would just answer it. The fact that there is an answer here [in this script,] I’m assuming that meant it had gone to the Triad process.” …Other CNN editorial staffers also nodded in their depositions to their reliance on this pre-publication review process, which prompted Black’s lawyers in March to make a push for access to “Triad” communications that the network has been insisting are shielded by attorney-client privilege. And if CNN won’t give up these sensitive conversations, Black’s team wants Judge Oftedal to prohibit CNN from pointing to the Triad as a demonstration of its care in vetting the hospital exposé. “This is a textbook use of attorney-client privilege as both a sword and shield,” Black’s lawyers argued. Other interesting tidbits revealed in Cooper’s deposition transcript include him bristling “over the implication that he’s just a pretty face.” Gardner quotes Cooper as saying “I feel it makes it seem like I don’t do anything all day long and I’m just sitting around for the camera to turn on,” insisting that he is “deeply involved, you know, all day long every day, in learning and research and stuff. It’s just not for lengthy yearlong investigations,” and objecting to being described as a “host,” as opposed to an anchor. Black has retained Tom Clarke and Libby Locke to represent him in this lawsuit, the husband-and-wife litigation team who are also representing Dominion Voting Systems in a $1.6 billion defamation case against Fox News and several of their key on-air personalities. Gardner noted the significant risk of a cripplingly-high monetary judgment both media outlets are facing in these two lawsuits, arguing that it is “no stretch to say that CNN could face a nine-figure damages verdict should it lose big at trial next spring.” Still, looking back at the original 2015 CNN.com article, there are a number of points raised therein (that Gardner omitted from his post) that don’t rely solely on how the mortality rate was calculated, including parents being warned by someone in the hospital to transfer their baby away from St. Mary’s, and the low frequency of advanced pediatric cardiac procedures being performed at St. Mary’s (indicating a lack of experience and expertise in such delicate procedures; the small size of infant hearts is just one issue that makes surgeries substantially riskier): [M]ultiple studies show hospitals like St. Mary’s tend to give the worst-quality care to children with heart defects, because they get so little practice. The studies show hospitals with fewer surgeries tend to have higher death rates, especially when the surgeries are complex… According to an independent review of St. Mary’s program, the hospital did 23 heart operations in 2013. To put that in perspective, consider that in the United States, 40% of pediatric heart surgery centers in the United States perform more than 250 cases a year, according to data from the Society of Thoracic Surgeons. Eighty percent of centers do more than 100 cases a year. Anything less than 100 cases a year is considered “low volume” by the society. “Like anything else, if you use a skill only occasionally, it’s hard to develop,” says Dr. Roger Mee, the former chief of pediatric heart surgery at the Cleveland Clinic. “With something as complex and dangerous as children’s heart surgery, you have to develop a whole team, and it’s hard to develop a team around 27 cases.” “With 27 cases a year,” he adds, “it would be easy to make a total mess with newborn babies.” The CNN.com article also cited what it described as a “scathing” review by a state-appointed group of five independent pediatric cardiologists of the St. Mary’s pediatric cardiac surgery program, finding that “many vital tests and services for children’s hearts were lacking,” “uniformly inadequate” echocardiogram reports, a lack of pediatric electrophysiology expertise (the study of abnormal heart rhythms), and concerns about the “extremely low volume” of pediatric cardiac surgeries being performed at the hospital. These are all defensive arguments that CNN’s attorneys could make at trial, if the case proceeds that far, a tricky decision that will likely be determined in large part by how Judge Richard Oftedal rules on several evidentiary issues, including how much information about “The Triad” process and other internal CNN communications is admissible. As Gardner noted, “CNN, just like Fox News in its showdown against Dominion, will have to consult its insurers and take a measure of the state of play as the trial nears.” The ongoing cost-cutting by CNN’s new parent company Warner Bros. Discovery in the aftermath of the merger, along with CEO David Zaslav’s ambition to redirect the network’s coverage to focus more on objective journalism over opinion commentary, seems likely to provide additional incentive to seek a settlement rather than roll the dice with a jury. Mediaite reached out to CNN for comment but did not receive a reply.
Don Lemon being demoted out of prime time off to some stupid morning program. Maybe his 500 viewers will follow him there. https://www.politico.com/news/2022/...mon-poppy-harlow-and-kaitlan-collins-00056930
"500 viewers" --- stop with the gross exaggerations. It would take another 400 something to reach this level.