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ABC News caved when it settled with Trump
The
Disney-owned news outlet broke Rule 1 of resisting autocracy: “Don’t obey in
advance”
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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
to lose.
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.
