Summary
ABC News faces bipartisan backlash after settling a $15M defamation lawsuit with Donald Trump over anchor George Stephanopoulos’s inaccurate claim that Trump was “found liable for rape” in E. Jean Carroll’s lawsuits.
The settlement includes a public apology, $1M in legal fees, and a $15M donation to Trump’s presidential library.
Critics, including legal experts and political figures, accuse ABC of prioritizing profit over principle, arguing the case was winnable if litigated.
This follows broader debates on media accountability and legacy outlets’ handling of defamation lawsuits. Trump denies wrongdoing in Carroll’s related cases.
Was the case winnable? Yeah, almost certainly.
Would the upcoming administration try to get revenge after losing a high profile case like this? Also almost certain.
ABCs bean counters realized that $15M as a donation would be cheaper than trying to fight the government constantly over the next 4 years.
You voted for this.
Complying in advance is how we get fascist government.
That is the first lesson in “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the 20th Century” by Prof. Snyder
This is sign that our media completely capitulated and won’t even try to fight to preserve our democracy.
Our media has long been bought. That’s through advertising. News should not be allowed to run ads.
It was all the consolidation. They’re little feifdoms now.
Best we can hope for is some new medium to rise up that they cannot buy out.
Boom! Fediverse
You’re not wrong, but ABC is definitely not trying to fight tyranny. They’re a corporation with the sole goal of making money. This has been true of basically any US media company since the Reagan administration.
ABC is looking to literally buy some goodwill so that they can continue to make money after Trump’s term.
The country already knowingly voted for the fascists, just under the thought that “they’re our kind of fascists”
Traditional media hasn’t tried to preserve anything other than whatever spin on a story gets the most views and clicks. Independent media are the ones we all need to look out for and tune into now.
A good example from the tech world is GamersNexus.
Yeah, after reading his books I now scheduled recurring donations for ProPublica, NPR and also an subscribed to a local news paper that still does some real journalism.
Apparently we don’t have to do anything as advanced as that to get one. Because the American people would just as easily vote one in.
If you’re looking for media to fight for democracy, I think you’re looking in the wrong place. Media is supposed to present the news. Then people can act on it.
What is happening though is that US news is not presenting the news in an unbiased way.
There is no such thing as unbiased news. The best you can hope for is a diverse selection of news sources where the biases mostly cancel out in most situations.
I actually did not vote for this
Most people did not vote for this. He did not even get 50% of the popular vote. Let’s stop pretending the system doesn’t stack the odds against the people. If we did that we wouldn’t have been afraid to stack the courts, and so on.
I’d bet you would like more action on climate change too and yet the world cares not.
I don’t see how the payment will stop orange man from punishing them (and other media outlets he doesn’t like) anyway.
If media conglomerates with millions of dollars don’t stand up to him, how can they expect any of us to do so effectively.
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That’s the neat part, you don’t.
Would the incoming administration try for revenge after winning a case like this? Also almost certain.
Dunking on weakness is their entire theme.
Probably still gonna be fighting the government for the next 4 years
Unless this is an indication that they don’t intend to fight, and instead will be tiptoeing around any criticism of Trump.
Also the likelihood of it being winnable goes down a lot the moment Trump takes office. I don’t like it but i understand the decision. Still, we have to fight.
Another perspective is that republicans, democrats and certainly large media companies are all prioritizing profit, polarization and fear.
Justice is too expensive. Maybe the tariffs will fix it.