And Trump finally has a legitimate Time Magazine cover to hang on the walls of his golf clubs instead of the fake one he's been using.
UPDATE 12/15/2024:
And warn others of the dollar amount they might be facing in the event of any lawsuit.
A couple independent sources:
As far as I'm aware, McClatchy papers are still decent. They have the Miami Herald, the Kansas City Star, and the Sacramento Bee, among other local papers. Media Bias has rated McClatchy DC as "left-center" in editorial bias, and "High for factual reporting due to proper sourcing and a clean fact-check record." (A detailed report is included at the link.)
Consider Democracy Docket for information on voting rights.
UPDATE 12/15/2024 03:11 pm: Oh, what a surprise...
[T]he 1964 case of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan [...] involved an ad that criticized the police force in Montgomery, Alabama for its treatment of civil rights protesters. The ad contained a few factual inaccuracies, such as misstating the number of times Martin Luther King Jr. had been arrested. The police commissioner sued the Times for libel and won based on Alabama law that was satisfied by a showing of falsity.
The Supreme Court unanimously reversed. It held that a public official alleging libel had to prove what has come to be known as actual malice or constitutional malice. The First Amendment precluded a libel claim by a public official based on mere falsity; rather, the plaintiff needed to show a media defendant knew the statement was false or at least recklessly disregarded its falsity.
Justice Brennan justified the actual malice standard as critical to safeguarding freedom of the press and preventing self-censorship based on fear of legal repercussions for criticizing public officials. As Justice Brennan wrote, “Erroneous statement is inevitable in free debate, and it must be protected if the freedoms of expression are to have the 'breathing space' that they need to survive.” The Court further explained that the standard was critical for ensuring accountability for government officials.
NY Times v. Sullivan immediately gained canonical status and the actual malice standard has been widely accepted as a cornerstone of constitutional law. (Recently, Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch criticized the decision’s underpinnings, which provoked the equivalent of gasps among court watchers.)
So, had the [ABC/Stephanopoulos] case gone to trial, the jury’s focus would have been on whether Stephanopoulos’s statement— “Donald Trump has been found liable for defaming the victim of that rape by a jury. It’s been affirmed by a judge”—was false and, if so, whether Stephanopoulos knew it or was recklessly indifferent to its falsity.
[...]
The case that Stephanopoulos and ABC would make to a jury is that it was literally true to say, “Trump has been found liable for defaming the victim of that rape by a jury. It’s been affirmed by a judge.” That statement, which was the initial assertion from which the others emerged, most sensibly relies on Kaplan’s judgment that the jury found Trump guilty of rape in the more common usage of that term. The Washington Post headline—“Judge clarifies: Yes, Trump was found to have raped E. Jean Carroll”—straightforwardly affirmed that interpretation.
An extra cushion of protection from liability is that Stephanopoulos manifestly believed the statement was true, which is why he cited the headline. Trump’s argument would need to be that Stephanopoulos’s subjective impression was reckless. But it’s a hard sell to a jury, I think, to say that taking the word of the judge on the case is reckless.
Finally, there’s the question of whether the whole brouhaha matters at all because there’s no damage to Trump’s reputation, which is a necessary element of a defamation claim. Trumpalready has been publicly accused of sexual misconduct by 26 women, spanning incidents dating back 50 years. He has denied them all, and the public seems to have largely given him a pass. Conversely, members of the public have long since taken him to be an incorrigible sexual offender. It’s hard to see why the Stephanopoulos interview would damage his reputation among either cohort.
The decision permitting the case to go to trial by Judge Cecilia Altonaga of the Southern District of Florida recognized and basically endorsed the argument that Stephanopoulos’s statements were not actionably false.
[...]
Since Stephanopoulos’s statement relied expressly on the judge’s finding, that conclusion could have been enough to grant the motion. But the judge ultimately decided that there was an issue of fact that a jury needed to resolve, namely whether Stephanopoulos was relying on Kaplan’s statements or whether he was relying on—and misconstruing—the definition of rape under New York criminal law.
There is one more material fact that possibly bore on the settlement. A magistrate handling discovery had ordered both Trump and Stephanopoulos to sit for four-hour depositions in the coming days. That’s always an attractive opportunity for lawyers in cases involving Trump, who is erratic, lacks self-control, and is always at risk of committing perjury. On the other hand, it’s also true that Stephanopoulos’s deposition could have been damaging for ABC’s case, as Trump’s lawyers could have asked him 25 versions of the question: “Isn’t there a difference between rape and sexual assault?”
All these details demonstrate that Trump was by no means on a glide path to victory when ABC settled. And given the traditionally vigorous litigation of defamation claims by the large media companies, the expectation was that ABC would have fought hard and to the end. Indeed, if this case had been brought a few years ago, or if it were brought today by a prominent public official other than Trump, it is very likely that ABC would not have agreed to the settlement.
[...]
The settlement comes on the verge of his return to the White House and coincides with a series of startling aggrandizements of his own power. All in all, it clearly strengthens Trump’s hand in bringing the media to heel and deterring negative but truthful reporting about him.
[...]
It means that Trump has new wind in his sails for his continuing threats to make trouble for media that criticize him. He has threatened not just defamation claims (which he has continued to file, including a $10 billion case against CBS for a supposedly too-cozy interview with Vice President Harris). He also suggests that major networks—whom he refers to as “the enemy of the people” and “fake news”—such as ABC should lose their broadcast licenses and that journalists should be imprisoned if they refuse to name confidential sources.
[...]
One might think that the most mainstream media companies would be the least likely to kowtow to Trump’s threats. But here, I think there is a very unfortunate throughline between ABC’s buckling and the conduct of other media behemoths like The Washington Post and The LA Times, both of whose owners scuttled expected endorsements of Kamala Harris.
[...]
And it can be argued—and I’m sure it will—that the settlement was a reasonable business move for ABC and Disney [and their stockholders]. The $15 million in damages is essentially pocket change, and the statement of regret was sufficiently lawyered and muddled to be not too damning. But the whole package of money, legal fees, and a somewhat muddled statement of regret clearly amounts to a solid win for Trump.
[...]
Trump’s settlement has likely succeeded in recalibrating the President’s relationship to the media it way that increases the probability that members of the Fourth Estate will stay their hands rather than risk a defamation suit for reporting important, truthful material that provokes the ire of the maximum leader.
[...]
We are watching the initial degradation of democratic rule.
Harry Litman
