Ward wins again. OAN doesn’t. Again. | Live from the Green Room

CNN’s Clarissa Ward has already been a Media Winner once during the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban. In the subsequent days there were a dozen reasons she could have won the day again for the compelling, on-the-ground reporting she’s filing from the streets of Kabul.

She could have been named the winner for daring to question a Taliban “spokesperson” on face covering mandates for women. Or for continuing to uncover her face while reporting despite the Taliban already clamping down on women in the country.

She could be named winner for her unique and fearless assessment of Joe Biden‘s speech, and how citizens of Afghanistan are likely to react to it. Or for confronting a Pentagon spokesperson and demanding answers for the people still trapped behind Taliban lines. Or for doing both of those things without regard to or being influenced by unfair attacks from politicians and pundits at home.

Certainly Ward deserves a media win for her incredible poise and composure as gunfire erupts around her, or for how she and her cameraman continue doing their important work even as threats are leveled directly and explicitly at them.

But Ward wins today for the moment, in this report, when she has on a translator who worked with Americans, and the man shows his actual Green Card on camera.

Amid all the chaos in the streets, the gunfire and threats both in Kabul and in D.C., amid hundreds of reports and personal accounts, Ward delivered an on-street report that showed in stark, visible, terms that anyone who sees it can understand.

What Clarissa Ward and her cameraman are capturing is worth a thousand words scribbled here on our shores. She showed the human being behind the rhetoric, the at-risk Afghan citizen, one of thousands and thousands, who are suffering now.

Ward’s reporting from Afghanistan could be a media win every day this week. She’s the winner today because so many are losing right now, and she’s telling their stories. At risk, and under fire. That’s reporting. That’s journalism.

One America News has faced another loss in their legal battle against MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.

On Tuesday, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a previous court ruling that determined Maddow’s statements regarding the far-right, pro-Donald Trump network were not actionable.

OAN, owned by Herring Networks, first sued Maddow for $10 million in 2019 after the anchor labeled the network as “paid Russian propaganda.”

The suit slammed her comments as “malicious and utterly false,” despite the fact that they were based on a Daily Beast report that noted OAN employs reporter Kristian Rouz, who also worked for Kremlin-owned media outlet Sputnik.

“We literally learned today that that outlet the President is promoting shares staff with the Kremlin,” Maddow said following news of the Beast’s report, adding, “In this case, the most obsequiously pro-Trump right wing news outlet in America really literally is paid Russian propaganda. Their on-air U.S. politics reporter is paid by the Russian government to produce propaganda for that government.”

OAN maintained, however, that the network “is wholly financed by the Herrings, an American family” and “has never been paid or received a penny from Russia or the Russian government,” justifying their defamation suit.

A federal judge dismissed the suit in May 2020, concluding that Maddow’s statement was “an opinion that cannot serve as the basis for a defamation claim.”

Following through with judge’s grant, MSNBC and Maddow requested that OAN pay $350,000 in legal fees. In February, the court permanently dismissed the case and awarded the defendants $247,667.50.

Despite the ruling, OAN president Charles Herring was “highly confident” that the network would “receive a favorable and just ruling in the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.”

Well, Herring’s prediction was off the mark. By a lot.

The network is not having good luck in court this year, and is one of the targets of a massive lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems.