Last week, ABC News made a decision that should alarm anyone who cares about press freedom: it agreed to pay Donald Trump $16 million and issue a public apology over accurate reporting about his sexual abuse case. This wasnât just a settlementâit was a surrender, and the implications for journalism are deeply troubling.
The details matter here. ABC is paying Trump $15 million (which will go to his âfuture presidential foundation and museumâ) plus $1 million in legal fees because George Stephanopoulos used the phrase âliable for rapeâ when discussing Trumpâs E. Jean Carroll case verdict. While the jury technically found Trump liable for sexual abuse rather than rape, even the judge noted this distinction was largely semantic, writing that the verdict didnât mean Carroll had âfailed to prove that Mr. Trump ârapedâ her as many people commonly understand the word ârape.ââ
In other words, ABC is paying Trump $16 million over what amounts to careful, defensible journalism.
As Margaret Sullivan points out in her latest American Crisis newsletter, this settlement breaks a cardinal rule of journalism: Donât cave to legal intimidation. Drawing from her experience as editor of The Buffalo News, Sullivan explains that news organizations traditionally refuse to settle defamation cases because âsettling would only encourage more people to sue.â Once you show that bullying works, you invite more bullying.
But that was a different era of journalism, wasnât it? Before news organizations were just small divisions of massive entertainment conglomerates. Today, ABC News isnât just ABC Newsâitâs Disney. And Disney has theme parks to protect, movies to distribute, and countless other business interests that could be affected by a vindictive president.
The timing here is impossible to ignore. Just days before the settlement, Disney executives had dinner with Trumpâs transition team in Florida. Sure, ABC claims this was just a routine meeting about transition coverage. But this is the same Trump who spent his campaign threatening to strip ABC of its broadcasting license and attacking its debate moderators for fact-checking him.
Legal experts say ABC likely would have won if itâd fought back. As law professor RonNell Andersen Jones told the New York Times, news organizations typically avoid these settlements because they have âthe full weight of the First Amendment on their side.â
But Disney apparently decided that legal principle wasnât worth the risk to its broader business interests. And thatâs what makes this so dangerous.
Sullivan cites historian Timothy Snyderâs crucial insight about resisting autocracy: âDo not obey in advance.â When institutions preemptively submit to potential autocrats, they teach those autocrats what they can get away with. ABC News just gave Trump a blueprint for how to bend media organizations to his will.
Trumpâs already taking his victory lap. âThe media is tamed down a little bit,â he crowed at the New York Stock Exchange. âThey like us much better now, I think. If they donât then weâll just have to take them on again, and we donât want to do that.â
Thatâs not a subtle threat. Itâs an explicit one. And ABC News just proved it works.
Remember back in May when Stephanopoulos appeared on Stephen Colbertâs show and declared he wouldnât be âcowed out of doing my job because of the threat of Donald Trumpâ? The audience cheered. But apparently, Disney executives had other ideas.
This is how press freedom erodesânot through dramatic crackdowns, but through corporate calculation. When news organizations are owned by massive conglomerates, journalism becomes just another business interest to be traded away when convenient.
The message to other journalists is clear: Challenge Trump at your own risk. Your corporate owners might not have your back. And thatâs exactly how authoritarianism growsâthrough institutions that choose appeasement over principle, that teach power what it can do by surrendering before theyâre even asked.
ABC News didnât just cave to Trump. It helped write the playbook for crushing press freedom. The question now is: Whoâs next?
