$1.3 Billion Lawsuit for CNN

Since you can never have too many lawsuits, CNN is being sued on not just on one, but two continents.  In addition to the 14 lawyers who are trying to have their case heard in Beijing courts, yesterday a New York beautician and Beijing elementary school teacher have presented their own lawsuit to a New York federal court. 

China Daily paints a sad picture of the suit, saying the women accuse Jack Cafferty "violated the dignity and reputation of Chinese people and intentionally or recklessly inflicted emotional distress on the plaintiffs."  The plaintiffs are the 1.3 billion Chinese people, and the suit asks for $1.3 billion for Chinese worldwide.

I assume that most of the plaintiffs have no idea about the case, or even the initial comments that brought it into being. On the April 9 broadcast of CNN's "The Situation Room," Cafferty said, "I think our relationship with China has certainly changed. I think they're basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they've been for the last 50 years."

For the past two weeks, these comments have been picked apart worldwide.  CNN's reputation in China was already suffering before these comments, and now the public outrage has even escalated to the point of having an anti-cnn.com website, and anti-cnn theme song. 

While lawsuits are a perfectly valid form of expression, I still don't quite understand what the plaintiffs expect to gain from these procedings.  The monetary stakes involved are somewhat inconsequential.  One case asks for the equivalent of about $14.50, and the other wants about $1 per person.

Attorney Ming Hai, one of the six lawyers for the New York lawsuit, told China Daily he was confident of victory because "justice is on our side."  Jiang Yu, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, told reporters, "We hope CNN will take this seriously, because what CNN said and did has not only hurt China's feelings, but also CNN's own image."

The CNN bashing has definitely damaged its reputation in China, but I don't know that either Ming's expectations or Jiang's hopes will be realized.  While the U.S.'s Stella Awards seem to get a little more interesting every year, I would be surprised if Ming's case goes in the way he plans.  To claim that a show which only has about 1.1 million U.S. viewers has done extreme emotional damage to 1.3 billion Chinese people seems a bit extreme.      

The Chinese lawsuit is more far-fetched, since Cafferty, an American, was broadcasting his opinion from the U.S.  It's not like he was criticizing China from CCTV, which hundreds of millions might watch in China.  CNN is not easily accessible in China, so someone who wanted to watch "The Situation Room" would really have to search hard for it.

Even though the "justice" Ming Hai desires from this case might not be dispensed in the way he desires, this whole scenario has brought up interesting debate on journalistic ethics and free speech in the U.S. and China. 

We clearly have a long way to go before CNN and the people suing the network come to a consensus on these issues, but hashing them out and gaining more informed cultural perspectives is a step in the right direction.