ABC News caved when it settled with Trump
The Disney-owned news outlet broke Rule 1 of resisting autocracy: “Don’t obey in advance”
When I became the chief editor of my hometown daily, The Buffalo News, more than 20 years ago, I inherited a number of ongoing lawsuits against the paper.
Mostly, they were libel or defamation claims. In each instance, somebody didn’t like the story we did about them or their company.
I also inherited — and continued — the paper’s longtime policy of not settling such cases. Fighting back took a lot of money and a lot of time. It took the skill of our excellent lawyers, John Stenger and Joseph Finnerty.
The reason was simple: Settling would only encourage more people to sue the paper. They would see filing suit against The Buffalo News as a way to make some easy money and, as a side benefit, to embarrass the paper.
Not settling sent a different message: If you sue The News, you’re in for a long, expensive fight. Prepare to hunker down and spend years — and tons of money on legal fees. And prepare to fail. During my tenure, we never lost a case.
We felt we were on solid ground. I believed that our stories were, if not perfect, certainly legally defensible. Journalists do make mistakes, of course — they are human and often publishing on a tight deadline — but our reporters were responsible and their editors were careful.
Now flash forward to what happened this past week as ABC News agreed to pay $15 million to settle a defamation lawsuit filed by Donald Trump. He objected to the way George Stephanopoulos used the term “liable for rape” to characterize the jury finding in a 2023 civil case in Manhattan. (Background: The jury ruled that Trump was liable for sexual abusing and defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll, not for raping her. But it’s murky. The overseeing judge noted that the jury’s verdict didn’t mean that Carroll failed to prove that Trump raped her, “as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’” Trump was told to pay $83 million in damages to Carroll; he’s appealing the verdict.)
Trump loves to sue news organizations but rarely wins. This outcome was different — and troubling.
“The agreement was a significant concession by a major news organization,” noted the New York Times. (Here’s a gift version of that article.)
ABC News should never have caved. They might well have prevailed if they had hung in there. The legal bar is very high for libeling a public figure, and Trump is the ultimate public figure. Instead, this outcome encourages Trump in his attacks on the press — and he needs no encouragement.
As one law professor told the Times, what ABC News did was very unusual. News organizations generally don’t settle “because they fear the dangerous pattern of doing so and because they have the full weight of the First Amendment on their side.”
Why did ABC News throw in the towel? It‘s hard to know for sure, but gets easier if you are aware that the news organizations is owned by Disney, a huge corporation with a lot of turf to protect. As the Times reported, the Disney executive who oversees ABC News had dinner with Trump’s top aide, Susan Wiles, just days before the settlement, as “part of a visit by several ABC News executives to Florida to meet with Mr. Trump’s transition team.”
Was this settlement, which includes ABC’s public expressions of regret, a simple case of kissing the ring? It sure looks that way. Trump has sworn to get revenge on his enemies and he values, above all, loyalty and kowtowing.
But loyalty and kowtowing isn’t the job of the press, which is supposed to represent the public in holding powerful people and institutions accountable.
Trump is already taking a victory lap.
“The media is tamed down a little bit,” he said in remarks at the New York Stock Exchange a few days ago. “They like us much better now, I think. If they don’t then we’ll just have to take them on again, and we don’t want to do that.”
Historian Timothy Snyder’s book “On Tyranny,” sets forth a number of guidelines for resisting creeping autocracy. Rule 1: “Do not obey in advance. Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.”
Regrettably, that’s what ABC News just did for Trump.
Thanks very much to all the American Crisis subscribers for caring about the crucial relationship between the news media and democracy. I know that many of you want to know what you can do — give us action steps, one reader urged me recently. I promise to address that soon.
In the meantime, let me know what’s worrying you most about what we’re seeing from the president-elect and his team. (Election denialist Kari Lake for Voice of America chief, anyone?)
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Margaret, the most surprising thing about the ABC settlement was that George Stephanopoulos went along with it (his name is in ABC's apology). I thought he understood the First Amendment and the laws surrounding defamation. He should have resigned rather than capitulate. RIP ABC News.
“In the meantime, let me know what’s worrying you most about what we’re seeing from the president-elect and his team. (Election denialist Kari Lake for Voice of America chief, anyone?)”
I wasn’t shocked in the least by ABC’s capitulation; especially after such capitulation by WaPPo, NYT, LA Times, Mika and Joe, etc…
And what worries me the most is t this capitulation; the MSM has always been a bunch of corporate invertebrates. Let’s not forget 9/11, and the Iraq debacle. The MSM sold their collective souls for access and Troop embedding. The NYT’s even held back on an illegal spying program under guise of The Patriot Act.
So when it comes to what’s left of the MSM, which isn’t already controlled by the right-wing media ecosystem, I have no illusions that they will be the Fourth Estate that saves democracy, because in the end, it’s all about self preservation.
That said, what worries me the most is the unknowns. Trump’s cabinet picks are disasters in the making, but most of the positions will be filled by loyalists of Heritage and The America First Policy institute. We have no idea who these people are, but that will have unchecked power behind the scenes.
We need to shed daylight on these clowns, because it’s not the devil you know who is the real threat; it’s the devil working his magic behind the scenes, who can do the most damage to our republic. IMHO!