Trump doubles down on attacking a weakened press

In a 2015 hashtag, Jeff Bezos proposed sending Donald Trump to outer space in response to social media posts by the then-presidential candidate accusing the Amazon founder of having purchased The Washington Post to cover up Amazon’s tax evasion. This month, headlines once again linked the names of the two billionaires. Bezos had announced plans to contribute $1 million to the January 20 inauguration of the president-elect, who has begun to make good on his threats to “straighten out the press” by way of lawsuits.

In the days running up to the election, Bezos killed the Post’s traditional presidential candidate endorsement. He did so after an op-ed supporting Kamala Harris had been drafted, and against protest from the paper’s editors. Bezos justified the decision in an article published by the newspaper, writing that “what presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias” among readers. In reality, his decision led to a different result: the cancelation of more than 250,000 subscriptions. Last week, Bezos got even cozier with his one-time rival by attending a dinner at Mar-a-Lago with Trump and Elon Musk, another of the Amazon founder’s longtime foes.

This change in attitude has been interpreted in Washington as proof that the Post, at least on the editorial side, does not seem willing to stand up to Trump as much as it did during his first presidency. Then, its editor was Martin Baron. Today, amid a phenomenal crisis occasioned by the signing of its new CEO, Will Lewis, who once worked for the conservative mogul Rupert Murdoch, the newspaper is unable to find a journalist willing to head its newsroom. According to Axios, at least two candidates for the position removed themselves from consideration when they learned of the ownership’s plans for the newspaper.

The drama at the Post can be interpretated as symptom of a certain normalization of the Trump anomaly as it pertains to journalism, but also public opinion. It’s not only that the media can no longer claim to being surprised by the president-elect’s return, it is also the calamitous state in which the industry finds itself after innumerable rounds of layoffs, fatigue after covering a shocking election, loss of public confidence — which is at a historic low, according to Gallup — and frustration that its influence is no longer what it once was. The Republican triumph is also a victory for the journalism of the extreme right and the podcasts of the misogynist “manosphere,” which Trump prioritized over invitations from major newspapers during his campaign.

“This time there will be no Trump effect,” warns Jeff Jarvis, City University of New York professor emeritus, in a phone interview, referring to the brief golden age of journalism ushered in by the shock of the real estate magnate and reality TV star’s first electoral win. Jarvis, who has been an outspoken critic of Trump in the media, calls campaign coverage by the two sacred cows — the Post and The New York Times — “absolutely terrible.” “It has been a demonstration of the fact that they don’t know how to react when fascism is at their doorstep. There was a lot of whitewashing of Trump’s lunacies, a lot of false balance and inexplicable desire to anger their readers,” he says.

While the Times did endorse Harris, the Post was not the only paper that chose not to antagonize Trump, who sees the press as “the enemy of the people.” Another 70 media outlets, according to the Nieman Foundation, did not continue the tradition of recommending that their readers vote for one of the two candidates. Among them, the Los Angeles Times (in another decision made by yet another multi-millionaire owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong) and USA Today.

Nor has Bezos been alone in his foray to Trump’s Camelot. The visit to Mar-a-Lago by Joe Scaborough and Mika Brzezinksi, anchors of the left-wing news network MSNBC’s morning show — to “kiss the ring” of the president-elect, says Jarvis — was sold as a maneuver to offer viewers more balanced coverage amid plummeting audience share (a trend among MSNBC’s left-wing competitors) and the fact that more than half the country’s voters cast a ballot for the Republican. MSNBC could not, however, prevent the visit from being seen as a capitulation. A visit by Univision executives to Trump’s Floridian estate may have also been a factor leading to the departure from the media company of Jorge Ramos, who is perhaps the most influential Latino journalist and well-known for his opposition to the tycoon.

Trump’s attempts to intimidate the press are nothing new. He has a considerable history of lawsuits against media organizations, though they have not always been allowed to proceed, and did not always prove victorious when they were. But this time, things are different. Recently, his lawyers sued the Des Moines Register and its pollster Ann Selzer over having published a poll the Saturday before the election that wrongly predicted that the Republican candidate would lose in Iowa. The survey results landed like a bomb in a highly contentious electoral season.

The legal action contains accusations of “brazen election interference”, alleging that Selzer violated the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act. Experts consulted for this article believe the claim lacks merit. “That law is designed to protect citizens from misleading advertising and cannot be applied to the media, which is not required by law to publish only research that proves accurate,” says Samantha Barbas, a law professor at the University of Iowa.

Case without merit

But experts also agree that Trump’s lawyers have a different goal in mind. “[They seek] to undermine the freedom of the press. Due to the high costs of litigation and the time that can be required to defend against these charges, it’s very possible that, at least with small media companies, they will achieve their goal,” attorney Anna Diakun, who works at Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute, says in a phone interview. “A second Trump presidency can be expected,” she continues, choosing her words carefully, “to bring more lawsuits and aggressively pursue whistleblowers and those who leak information in order to try to identify sources inside the government who journalists rely on, in order to charge them under the Espionage Act.” Some of these tactics have already been put into practice, the expert says, during Trump’s previous presidency.

Diakun also recalls how, in his first post-election appearance before reporters, Trump declared his intention to “straighten out our very corrupt press.” He announced the Iowa lawsuit and spoke of others to come against Bob Woodward, the reporter who uncovered the Watergate case; the Pulitizers, for rewarding the investigations of The New York Times and The Washington Post on the alleged Russian interference during the 2016 elections; as well as the one he filed in November against CBS and its program 60 Minutes over having broadcast an interview with Harris that was edited (according to Trump, in order to improve her answers) and aired shortly before the election.

Trump’s talent for sniffing out weakness in his rivals meant it was no surprise when, a few days before these threats, it was revealed that ABC News had settled with him for $15 million, plus $1 million in costs, to avoid court over his lawsuit against journalist George Stephanopoulos. The settlement stemmed from Stephanopoulos using the word “rape” on air while discussing Trump’s sexual abuse and defamation case with writer E. Jean Carroll, in which Trump was ordered to pay $5 million. The lawsuit focused on the semantics of New York’s legal code, as the jury had found Trump guilty of sexual abuse, not rape.

Analyses of the out-of-court settlement performed by U.S. media attribute the settlement to the unwillingness of Disney, ABC’s multinational owner, to get off on the wrong foot with the new president. Reports also point to the fact that the channel operates 230 affiliated local television stations, whose licenses will eventually need to be renewed. rump has threatened to block license renewals for media outlets critical of him. Disney, which is in the business of entertainment for the whole family, including the millions of relatives who voted for the Republican, does not want to risk jeopardizing the future merger agreements it is considering with other companies in this era of media crisis and conglomeration.

There were also fears that compromising communications from Stephanopoulos would come to light in discovery, which could make the journalist and network look bad. And not just that: there were also concerns that the case could end up in the Supreme Court, where two justices, conservatives Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, have expressed their interest in limiting the precedent of New York Times Company v. Sullivan, a landmark 1964 ruling for the freedom of the press.

In that case, the Supreme Court ruled that to prove defamation, an official — in this instance, L.B. Sullivan, an Alabama police officer accused of racism — must demonstrate that the statements made about him involved “actual malice.” The case and the phrase “actual malice” — which Barbas used in the title of her comprehensive book about the landmark ruling — was a gamechanger 60 years ago. For Justice Thomas, it opened the door to the press being able to “cast false aspersions on public figures with near impunity.” The president-elect has made it clear that he shares this dislike for its precedent.

The argument that it was better for ABC News to settle out of fear of bringing down Sullivan does not convince Jarvis, who calls it tantamount to admitting that the ruling’s precedent no longer applies to Trump. The journalist fears that “other media owners will chicken out.” He is also concerned that, without a “free and vigilant” press, the president-elect will have “a clear path to authoritarianism.”

Translated by Caitlin Donohue.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition