As NewsBusters was quick to report on Monday, Alex Marquardt announced that he was becoming CNN’s former chief national security correspondent. The timing and details were suspicious since he didn’t announce where he would be going and it happened just four months after CNN was found liable for malicious defamation because of his shoddy reporting. But former CNN media flunky Oliver Darcy had the scuttlebutt, in his Status newsletter, that Marquardt was indeed fired after a legal review from CNN’s parent company Warner Bros. Discovery regarding the defamation trial.
Despite the fact that CNN was liable for malicious defamation because Marquardt’s malice and lies against Navy veteran Zachary Young, Darcy mourned for his former colleague getting blindsided by the firing. “CNN stood by Alex Marquardt through a high-profile defamation trial—until a message from a company lawyer following the settlement set off a chain of events that ended with his sudden ouster,” he moped.
According to Darcy’s sources, Marquardt thought he was in clear following the end of the trial and punitive damages settlement agreement on January 17. “In fact, CNN’s behavior after the suit suggested anything but concern,” Darcy wrote. “The network elevated Marquardt to chief national security correspondent in September 2023, after the case had been filed. He continued to report on high-profile assignments, regularly filled in on the anchor desk, and remained a visible face of CNN’s reporting.”
“Internally and externally, the message was clear: CNN was standing by its reporter,” he deduced.
Unbeknownst to Marquardt, and possibly CNN’s top brass, protocols from their new parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, meant that there would be a “post-settlement ethics compliance review” which involved an internal investigation. That’s when things “quietly changed a few months ago,” as Darcy explained:
A lawyer from Warner Bros. Discovery—the network’s parent company—contacted Marquardt and others involved in the story for an interview. While the lawyer was from corporate, I’m told the review was overseen by CNN’s own legal team. The WBD lawyer was enlisted as a more objective third party.
In any event, Marquardt didn’t resist. He believed there were no unknowns left in the case. CNN’s lawyers had already examined every message and internal document during discovery. And his reporting at the time had been thoroughly vetted by the network's so-called "Triad" team, which subjects pieces to a rigorous fact-checking, legal, and standards review. So Marquardt sat for the interview with the lawyer and then went back to work, unaware that anything had shifted. Indeed during the review, he continued to guest anchor and appear on air.
But on Friday, he was called into a meeting with Moseley and a human resources representative. The message was short: he was being dismissed. The reason, he was told, came down to unspecified editorial differences. He asked for clarification, but none was offered. He was told he had to soon clean out his office.
“Was it the plan all along to off Marquardt after the trial concluded and the matter was firmly in the rear view mirror? Or did CNN’s additional editorial review actually uncover something so seismic and new that warranted the severe action?” Darcy wondered, after floating the idea that it might have been Marquardt’s social media posts about the Israel-Hamas War that got him canned.
Always having an eye for the dramatic, Darcy even dramatized how Marquardt sent the e-mail to his colleagues to let them know he was leaving:
At 10:04am on Monday, Alex Marquardt took a deep breath and pressed send on an email to his CNN colleagues, bidding them farewell. “It’s been an extraordinary time, which is why it’s so tough to say goodbye,” he wrote in the surprise announcement, reflecting on his eight years at CNN and calling it an “honor” to work alongside the network’s national security team. He didn’t mention that he had just been dismissed. Or that CNN—after defending him through a closely-watched defamation trial, promoting him, and grooming him as a future anchor—had abruptly severed ties.
Curious, he had all those details about Marquardt’s deep breaths before hitting send but claimed “Marquardt also declined to comment.”
It’s worth nothing that Darcy also got material details of the case wrong. He falsely claimed it was a “federal jury” that found CNN liable when it was a Florida state-level jury (he did get it right the second time he brought them up). He also wrongly claimed Marquardt’s report occurred in 2022, when it was in 2021.
Clearly, you can take the reporter out of CNN but you can’t take the CNN out the reporter.