Senior Law Clerk
In Black v. CNN, 50 Fla. L. Weekly D2017 (Fla. 4th DCA 2025), a pediatric heart surgeon sued CNN for defamation after broadcasts highlighted raw mortality rates that allegedly made his program look unusually dangerous. The crux: CNN accurately reported numbers, but didn’t explain risk adjustment—i.e., that surgeons handling the most complex cases often show higher mortality because the cases are riskier.
The trial court granted summary judgment to CNN. The Fourth DCA reversed, holding that—even when base facts are accurate—presentation can still defame if it’s reasonably capable of conveying a false impression to a lay audience. Prior “raw-data-is-fine” cases involved scientific journals read by trained experts. Mainstream news is different: the public may not infer risk adjustment on its own. Whether CNN’s framing implied a defamatory falsehood is a jury question.
Key points:
- Truth isn’t a blanket shield if selective presentation reasonably misleads.
- Audience matters: technical nuance omitted in consumer media can change meaning.
- Courts won’t weigh contested inferences at summary judgment when a reasonable juror could find defamatory implication.
Practice pointers (media & professionals):
- Include contextual qualifiers (case mix, risk categories, severity indices) when reporting clinical performance.
- For targets of reporting, preserve expert testimony explaining why raw rates, without risk adjustment, mislead lay viewers.
- In defamation-by-implication cases, focus on how an ordinary reader/viewer would understand the piece, not just the literal truth of each sentence.
Takeaway: Accurate numbers can still defame if the takeaway is misleading. In public-facing reporting on specialized metrics, context is king—and a jury may decide whether its absence crosses the line.
We handle defamation and media-accuracy disputes at the intersection of law, data, and public perception. Facing a reputational hit—or publishing sensitive performance data? Contact our team to calibrate risk and strategy.
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