Jail political critics? Donald Trump is open to it. But his dominant tactic as he begins his second term is to bully the media into submission.
We’re not just talking about everyday defamation lawsuits here.
We’re talking about Trump now suing an Iowa newspaper over a bad poll. And sue the pollster for consumer fraud. He complains 60 minutes for how it edited a video – a video he wasn’t even involved in. He is demanding $10 billion. He is also suing the Pulitzer Prizes for rewarding newspapers that reported on his alleged collusion with Russia.
This came after he sued ABC News over allegations that he was held liable for rape; In fact, he was found liable sexual abuseBut no rape.
A number of media analysts expressed shock this week that ABC’s parent company settled the rape case without trial. The Disney company paid out $15 million.
A global expert on free expression called this a worn playbook Used in autocratic countries: sue, sue and continue suing, regardless of whether lawsuits are justified.
Winning the suit is almost irrelevant, Eric Heinze said. What’s important is that potential critics don’t be afraid to insult you, as doing so could result in ruinous legal fees.
“This is how autocrats work,” said Heinze, a law professor at the University of London and director of the Center for Law, Democracy and Society Author of a book on international lessons from freedom of expression.
“Not by telling you how they will oppress you, but by being clear about how or if they will do it or when they will do it. This is the secret of the autocrat. It’s not clarity, it’s vagueness.”
The purpose of suppressing the press, he said, was to make it financially risky for people to say things they knew were perfectly legal.
The practice has an acronym: SLAPP
The practice is so widespread that there is an acronym: SLAPP, short for Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation. And it is used in all sorts of places, including in democracies by wealthy plaintiffs.
Cherian George comes from a country notorious for this practice: Singapore. He said defamation cases were part of the ruling party’s standard response to public debate.
In one famous case, a now-defunct magazine published an interview with an opposition leader who accused the Singapore government of using defamation suits to cover up corruption. How did the government react? From sued the magazine for defamation.
A former journalist, George is now an academic who studies freedom of expression and teaches at Hong Kong Baptist University.
He tells his students — most of whom are from mainland China — that one big difference from the United States is that courts’ interpretation of the First Amendment makes it so difficult for politicians to win a libel case that they rarely try.
“I need to update this lecture,” George said.
He says much will depend on the willingness of media owners to defend press freedom – the stuff that Hollywood films are made of The Washington PostThe fight to release a massive leak of Vietnam War documents.
He called the ABC case a failed test, not the kind of moment Disney would ever want to commemorate in one of its own films.
For-profit media owners face this political pressure, he said.
Just two days after Disney reached an agreement, there was another example of a wealthy media owner fighting to side with Trump.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who also happens to own the Washington Post, Donated $1 million on Trump’s inauguration fund and flew to Mar-a-Lago.
In the recent election he stunned his own newspaper staff cancel an editorial that supported Trump’s opponent Kamala Harris.
Trump remarked in one cryptic social media post Thursday that he is suddenly popular with certain unnamed people, in a message written in all caps: “EVERYONE WANTS TO BE MY FRIEND!!!”
Disney’s desire to make nice with Trump has drawn intense criticism.
NBC anchor Chuck Todd complained that his ABC colleague George Stephanopoulos had left. The anti-Trump conservative news outlet The Bulwark feared that the media would begin self-censorship and stop targeting Trump’s harshest critics.
Trump once admitted the motive for suing the media
However, according to some reports, the case was more complicated.
The New York Post recommended Disney decided to avoid a cumbersome discovery process, including evidence that Stephanopoulos was warned several times before the broadcast to avoid using the word “rape” and then used the word repeatedly.
Disney’s lawyers told the New York Times were worried The case could go all the way to the Supreme Court and end up becoming an excuse to weaken First Amendment jurisprudence.
Currently, it is extremely difficult for a public figure in the United States to successfully sue for defamation. Media is protected unless it publishes speeches knowingly malicious And recklessly indifferent to the truth.
It is the legacy of a lawsuit in which the New York Times was sued over a 1960 ad against segregation. An Alabama police commissioner said the verdict contained errors and unfairly vilified him, which was initially granted $500,000but the Supreme Court overturned it in New York Times v. Sullivan, the basis of current U.S. libel law.
They existed Efforts to challenge it. And a few Supreme Court justices, especially Clarence Thomassupport the revision of this 1964 decision.
Most lawsuits of this type are now dismissed out of court.
Trump is on record as saying, in response to Heinze’s earlier point, that winning is not the point in defamation suits.
Trump admitted this after suing a journalist in 2006 who questioned his claim to be a billionaire; He sued, lost, and then said it was worth it.
“I spent a few dollars on legal fees, and they spent a lot more.” said Trump.
“I did it to make his life difficult, which I’m happy about.”
His goal now is to make life difficult for a few more people.
Former US President Donald Trump hurled angry insults and threatened to sue a columnist who accused him of raping her during his testimony in October in a lawsuit filed by the writer. Video clips of his statement were unsealed by a court on Friday.
A summary of Trump’s complaints
This also includes the lawsuit against one of the most respected pollsters in the USA Iowa Consumer Fraud Act. The reason? A disastrously poor poll from Ann Selzer, who has since retired after an outstanding career.
She said a few days before the November election shocked the country One poll shows Kamala Harris leading in Iowa, a result that suggests a possible national landslide for her and is attracting significant media attention because of her track record.
Trump ultimately won Iowa by 13 points; In his statement of claim, he said the poll forced his campaign to expend unnecessary resources in Iowa, and he argued that an error of that magnitude was not statistically possible and was actually a malicious act.
He is seeking unspecified monetary damages from her and is also suing the newspaper that published the survey, the Des Moines Register.
This is after Trump sued CBS above 60 minutes Editing clips from an interview with Kamala Harris. The program showed a shortened clip in which she deals with a topic that she finds uncomfortable: the Middle East. It subsequently resisted calls to publicly release a full interview transcript. He’s aiming for $10 billion.
But CBS denies Trump’s accusation of malice. It said it showed and shared a clip of Harris’ response on its show another clip from the same answer with another CBS show.
He is too Lawsuit against the Pulitzer Prize Board of Directors about awards to newspapers for their reporting about the alleged collusion with Russia in the 2016 election campaign – “the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax,” as Trump calls it.
The 2016 affair led to criminal charges against some from Trump senior campaign staff and have the Pulitzer defended the awards they gave them to the New York Times and the Washington Post.
In response to the pollster’s lawsuit, Columbia University’s Knight Institute for Free Speech called Trump’s efforts a First Amendment nonstarter and urged the court to quickly dismiss the lawsuit and recognize it for what it is: an attempt to intimidate and to silence.
But Trump expressed his full support for the lawsuits during a media conference this week.
In fact, he said, he shouldn’t even have to fund these cases – the U.S. Department of Justice should; in other words, the Justice Department, which he will lead in a month.
“We have to defuse the press,” Trump said.
