Because CNN also operates in the EU. They have offices all over the world. That person's point remains. If I create a website in the US, and keep all my servers in the US, but don't block Europe and its users from accessing it, I am NOT subject to EU law. I am subject to US law, where my actual infrastructure is. There's millions of websites I can access from here that weren't intended to be viewed by my region but because of the open nature of the Internet, I can still see them.

Edit: Not sure how old you are but in the early 2000s this is how the famous filesharing website Pirate Bay was able to keep evading being taken down by moving their servers from country to country every time they encountered trouble with the local authorities. Foreign countries weren't able to do shit about it, but their users were still able to access it. That's how the Internet has always worked since its inception. The region blocking thing and serving different data to users of different countries is a relatively new thing. It's carving up the Internet into little bubbles and enclaves and defeating the whole purpose of it.