ABC's payment to Donald Trump sends shivers down the spine of the American media

Disney's $15 million payment to Donald Trump for defamation set a dangerous precedent for media freedom, legal experts and news executives said, as the new president threatens to redress the corrupt press.

Disney-owned ABC News agreed last week to pay Trump a huge sum to settle a defamation lawsuit he filed in March after star anchor George Stephanopoulos said on air that the former president was found responsible for rape.

A New York jury found Trump liable in a civil case for sexual abuse, but not for rape.

While Stephanopoulos said in May that he would not be intimidated from doing my job, on Saturday he and ABC expressed regret for his comment about Trump.

The network's decision left some lawyers, journalists and media executives perplexed and raised fears that Trump, who has threatened defamation suits against the media for decades, could use presidential power to muzzle the press.

I really don't know what ABC was thinking when they agreed to do this… Unless there is something we don't know, it seems like a weak deal, said Geneviève Lakier, professor in law at the University of Chicago. If ABC gives in and settles so quickly, it will surely embolden similar lawsuits. I'm disturbed.

The ABC's decision to settle was dangerous and would have a chilling effect, said Samantha Barbas, a law professor at the University of Iowa. This will encourage Trump and his allies to pursue these defamation suits. If they feel that they can silence the press or control it, intimidate it in any way, that will really encourage them to put forward more demands.

Trump said Monday he would file new defamation lawsuits against the media groups. I think you have to do this because they are very dishonest. We need a big media. We need fair media, he said. We need to straighten the press. Our press is very corrupt, almost as corrupt as our elections.

The standards for proving defamation under US law are high. As a public figure, Trump would have to prove that Stephanopoulos' comment was false and made with reckless disregard for the truth, legal experts say.

The constitutional standard in these types of defamation cases is extraordinarily favorable to defendants, literally the strongest protection in the world, so ABC entered this action with heavy weight in its favor, said RonNell Andersen Jones, professor in law at the University of Utah.

Lawyers cautioned that there may be information that could have influenced ABC's decision to settle that is not publicly known, making it impossible to determine the network's motives.

But the deal fueled speculation that ABC settled with Trump to avoid further anger from the new president. He redoubled his attacks on the media, threatening to revoke the broadcasting licenses of news channels, including ABC.

A Disney spokesperson referred questions about the settlement to ABC. ABC did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

America's top corporate executives are preparing for Trump 2.0, and major tech companies including Amazon and Meta have recently donated millions of dollars to his inauguration fund.

Disney has a particularly thorny association to contend with. Disney executive Dana Walden, seen as a potential successor to Chief Executive Bob Iger, is a longtime friend of Kamala Harris, a point Trump hammered home this election year in criticizing ABC.

Iger, who regularly donates to Democrats, has drawn attention for his lack of political contributions this year, reinforcing the sense that media bosses are trying to avoid antagonizing Trump.

As he criticized media groups Monday, Trump suggested his lawsuits could even target the Des Moines Register, an Iowa newspaper, for publishing a poll showing he would lose a state he ultimately won comfortably.

Trump also discussed plans for separate lawsuits against the CBS program 60 Minutes, journalist Bob Woodward, the New York Times and the Washington Post.

In the 1980s, as a real estate developer, Trump sued the Chicago Tribune when its architecture editor described his Manhattan skyscraper project as an ugly monstrosity. This suit was dismissed. Trump has also lost defamation lawsuits against media groups including CNN and the New York Times.

But handling these lawsuits is expensive and time-consuming for news organizations, which may also be legally obligated to make their internal communications public.

Following the deal with ABC, some news outlets are wondering if they have the means to defend themselves. A media lawyer said he received a flurry of emails this morning asking whether we had sufficient libel insurance.

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Although Trump may have had difficulty in the ABC case, legal experts have warned that any decision would be made by a jury and that Americans have become more hostile to the news media in recent years. In 2016, a Florida jury ordered Gawker to pay wrestler Hulk Hogan more than $115 million in damages, putting the media site out of business.

Trump's case against ABC was also filed in Florida. A veteran media lawyer told the Financial Times that the network might have struggled to convince a Florida jury, in part because of Stephanopoulos' aggressive questioning of US Congresswoman Nancy Mace during the emission.

You're trying to shame me as a rape victim, Mace told Stephanopoulos during the interview. The combination of Disney executive Walden's friendship with Harris and the tone of the interview meant they were at real risk of losing the jury, the attorney said.

Today, juries are increasingly unhappy with the press and would like to punish it, said Barbas of the University of Iowa. We may be entering an era of smear war.

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