ABC Had Good Legal Reasons to Settle with Trump
Donald Trump’s antagonism toward the media takes many forms, but until recently, his efforts to use the courts to go after the press had largely been viewed as a costly nuisance — expressions of his unhappiness over negative coverage rather than serious legal threats.
That changed recently when ABC News announced that it had agreed to pay $16 million to settle a defamation case brought by Trump. The president-elect said that there would be more lawsuits to come and then quickly followed through on that promise with a lawsuit against the Des Moines Register and longtime pollster Ann Selzer over a preelection poll that showed Vice President Kamala Harris leading in Iowa, a state that Trump handily won.
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News organizations are scrambling to find a coverage approach that adequately informs the American public about the country’s slide from democracy to authoritarian rule.
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Toxic politics and vast shifts in the technology landscape have created a plethora of thorny issues — both legal and ethical — for newsrooms, courts, and regulators.
The Meta-FTC trial | Section 230