SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
george stephanopoulos
Sanders Urges 'Independent Press That Reports the Truth Without Fear' of Trump Retribution
"If major media outlets succumb to intimidation from the Trump administration, the First Amendment is in serious danger."
Feb 03, 2025
Independent U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont on Monday took aim at both President Donald Trump's attempts at "suing the media into submission" and news outlets' willingness to settle such cases and self-censor as "incredibly dangerous" precedents.
In a video posted on social media, Sanders highlighted that CBS News parent company Paramount is in talks with Trump's lawyers to possibly settle a $10 billion lawsuit filed by the president just days before the 2024 election accusing "60 Minutes" of deceptively editing an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee.
Sanders also noted how ABC Newsagreed last year to pay a $15 million settlement that included a letter of regret after veteran anchor and political commentator George Stephanopoulos said Trump had been found "liable for rape" of writer E. Jean Carroll. A federal jury in Manhattan found Trump civilly liable for sexual abuse and defamation of Carroll, but not rape—even though Caroll testified in graphic detail that Trump raped her in a department store dressing room in the 1990s.
"I regard that as an incredibly dangerous precedent, both of those, ABC and CBS," Sanders said in the video, denouncing "major media outlets succumbing to pressure from the Trump administration."
"People have a right to express their own point of view," Sanders asserted. "Yeah, networks are wrong all of the time. They're wrong about me, wrong about Trump. But if you use the power of government to intimidate networks, they're not going to do the big stories. They're not going to do the investigations. Why should they go out on a limb and tell you something if they're afraid about being sued by the Trump administration?"
The video also notes Trump's lawsuit against pollster J. Ann Selzer, her polling firm Selzer & Company, The Des Moines Register, and the Iowa newspaper's parent company, Gannett, alleging fraud and "brazen election interference" over a November 2 poll showing Harris beating Trump by 3 points in the 2024 election. Trump won Iowa by 13 points.
"If major media outlets succumb to intimidation from the Trump administration, the First Amendment is in serious danger," Sanders stressed. "We need an independent press that reports the truth without fear of retribution."
Major media outlets have also been accused of self-censorship. Jeff Bezos and Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire owners of The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, respectively, have come under fire for prohibiting or restricting opinion pieces critical of Trump or supportive of his adversaries.
"If you believe The Washington Post's slogan that 'Democracy Dies in Darkness,' their owner was the first to switch off the light," journalist David Helvarg wrote last month for Common Dreams.
The Nation justice correspondent and columnist Elie Mystal wrote last month that "recent events have shown that Trump does not have to impose a new regime of censorship if the press censors itself first."
"And that, I believe, is what we are witnessing now: a press that gives away its First Amendment rights before Trump takes them away," he continued. "A press that will not speak truth to power if power threatens to kick their owners off a cocktail party list or gum up their operations."
"The debasement of the press will continue until readers and viewers reject the media that would rather lie to them than tell the truth to Trump," Mystal added. "The people who run these publications and news organizations are betting that we won't."
Keep ReadingShow Less
ABC News Shows What It Looks Like When Corporate Media Bows to Trump
We are beginning to see this all over the U.S. political-economic system — giant corporations and hugely wealthy people going out of their way to appease King Trump even in advance of his coronation.
Dec 17, 2024
ABC shouldn’t have agreed to settle the defamation case Trump brought against it — handing him $15 million for his presidential “library” (whatever monument that turns out to be) and another million for his legal fees, along with an apology.
It shouldn’t have, first, because the standard for defamation of a public figure requires that a plaintiff prove that the defendant acted with “actual malice” — that is, knew their statement was false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth.
But when on March 10, ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos asserted that Trump had been found civilly liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll, there’s zero evidence that Stephanopoulos knew it to be false or was acting with reckless disregard for the truth.
At Trump’s civil trial for defaming Carroll, she testified that he pushed her against a dressing room wall, forced his mouth onto hers, yanked down her tights, and shoved his hand and then his penis inside her while she struggled against him. She said she finally kneed him off her and fled.
A very big corporation that worries about all the ways the upcoming Trump administration might hurt its bottom line.
In upholding the civil judgment for Carroll and against Trump, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote that the unanimous jury verdict was almost entirely in favor of Carroll, except that the jury concluded she had failed to prove that Trump raped her “within the narrow, technical meaning of a particular section of the New York Penal Law,” which requires vaginal penetration by a penis.
The judge said that jury verdict did not mean that Carroll “failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’ Indeed ... the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”
After a federal judge says that the jury under his purview found that Trump “exactly” raped her, as rape is commonly understood, isn’t it understandable that Stephanopoulos concluded that Trump had been found civilly liable for raping her?
By caving into Trump with this $15 million settlement, ABC didn’t just signal that Trump was correct and Stephanopoulos wrong about whether Trump had in fact raped Carroll.
ABC also signaled that Trump might be correct about a lot of other things he has accused ABC and the rest of the mainstream media of reporting falsely about him — that he lied when he said the 2020 election was stolen from him, for example, or that he lied when he claimed he did not provoke the rioters on January 6, 2021, or when he characterized it as a “peaceful” protest, or said President Biden was behind his prosecutions for trying to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election and making off with classified documents.
ABC’s cave to Trump has even larger implications.
Trump has already used legal threats to intimidate the media and anyone brazen enough to criticize or question him — saying he’ll prosecute journalists and their sources, eliminate funding for public radio and television, subpoena news organizations, revoke networks’ broadcast licenses, and use libel lawsuits.
In the wake of ABC’s surrender, Trump is already expanding his threats of legal action against the news media, stating he wants to “straighten out the press.”
On Monday, Trump said that “today or tomorrow” he would sue the Des-Moines Register newspaper over its final poll of Iowa voters that showed him losing the November election to Vice President Kamala Harris, because he believed the poll “was fraud and it was election interference.”
The Register’sfinal poll before Election Day, conducted by legendary pollster J. Ann Selzer, showed Harris leading Trump 47-44 percent among likely voters in the state. The poll was a bombshell that suggested Harris might pull an upset in a state Trump won in 2016 and 2020.
Trump went on to win the state by a 13-point margin.
“She’s a very good pollster,” Trump said of Selzer. “She knows what she was doing.”
Selzer said she was “mystified” by allegations she was politically motivated or had engaged in election interference. “To suggest without a single shred of evidence that I was in cahoots with somebody, that I was being paid by somebody, it’s hard to pay too much attention to it except that they are accusing me of a crime.”
Trump’s comments about the Register were in response to a reporter’s question about whether Trump planned to file more lawsuits following the settlement with ABC, including against social media influencers and other independent figures. Trump responded, “I think you have to do it because they’re very dishonest. We need a great media. We need a fair media.”
Some news organizations are already warning their reporters to prepare: Axiosrecently told its staff to expect an increased number of lawsuits from the Trump administration, Semafor reported.
At one point, Trump suggested that the U.S. government should be taking up these lawsuits against the news media. “I feel I have to do this. I shouldn’t really be the one to do it. It should have been the Justice Department or somebody else. But I have to do it. It costs a lot of money to do it, but we have to straighten out the press.”
So, why didn’t ABC stand by Stephanopoulos and stand up to Trump?
Media lawyers say it’s rare to see a settlement at this stage of a legal dispute.
After Trump filed the lawsuit accusing Stephanopoulos of “actual malice,” ABC filed a motion to dismiss the case, claiming Trump could not prove actual malice. In July, the judge assigned to the case rejected ABC’s motion and allowed the case to move forward. This subjected the network to the pretrial discovery process, meaning that Stephanopoulos would have his emails and other work materials scrutinized.
The curious thing here is that when media defendants are unsuccessful at the dismissal stage of a trial, they typically move on to preparing for summary judgment and challenge the legal sufficiency of a plaintiff’s claim. Four media lawyers I checked with told me they didn’t understand why ABC would settle before trying for summary judgment, especially when it had such a strong case.
Conservative radio host Erick Erickson, who used to practice law, says ABC and Stephanopoulos wanted to avoid discovery. The “$15 million settlement is not the cost of doing business. It is avoiding discovery.”
I don’t think it’s a cover-up. I know George Stephanopoulos well (we worked together in the Clinton administration), and I have utter confidence in his integrity.
But I don’t have nearly as much confidence in the Walt Disney Company — which, along with its ownership of ABC, owns the Disney Channel, ESPN Wide World of Sports, Freeform, FX, Hulu, Hotstar, and National Geographic. It also owns the properties Disneyland Resort, Walt Disney World Resort, and Disneyland Paris. It owns the studios Pixar Animation, Marvel Studios, Lucasfilm, and 20th Century Studios. It owns the brands Star Wars, The Muppets, Disney Princesses, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Winnie the Pooh. It owns a publishing company, a cruise line, a venture capital firm, and a host of international media networks.
In other words: A very big corporation with its hands in all sorts of places. A very big corporation that worries about all the ways the upcoming Trump administration might hurt its bottom line.
No large American corporation wants to be actively litigating against a sitting president, especially one as vindictive as Trump. A $15 million settlement is chickenfeed compared to the myriad ways Trump could penalize Disney, a $205.25 billion corporation.
We are beginning to see this all over the American political-economic system — giant corporations and hugely wealthy people going out of their way to appease King Trump even in advance of his coronation. They are paying him off to maintain or enlarge their profits.
Which is why Disney’s control over ABC — like Jeff Bezos’s control over The Washington Post, Elon Musk’s control over what we used to call Twitter, and Patrick Soon-Shiong’s control over the Los Angeles Times — and every other wealthy individual’s or big corporation’s control over the news we get, poses such a challenge to American democracy in the age of Trump.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trump Dodges ABC and Demands Fox Debate With Harris
"Donald Trump is running scared and trying to back out of the debate he already agreed to," said the Democrat's campaign.
Aug 03, 2024
After nearly two weeks of refusing to commit to debating Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris on ABC, former Republican President Donald Trump said late Friday that he wouldn't join the September 10 face-off and had agreed to a Fox News-hosted event instead.
Trump had agreed to appear on ABC when President Joe Biden was seeking reelection, but since a disastrous debate performance on CNN in June led the 81-year-old Democrat to pass the touch to Harris—who on Friday secured enough delegates for the Democratic nomination—the 78-year-old Republican nominee has been noncommittal.
"I have agreed with Fox News to debate Kamala Harris on Wednesday, September 4th," Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. "The debate was previously scheduled against Sleepy Joe Biden on ABC, but has been terminated in that Biden will no longer be a participant, and I am in litigation against ABC Network and George Slopadopoulos, thereby creating a conflict of interest."
Trump is suingABC and George Stephanopoulos for defamation over the anchor's characterization of a civil jury last year finding the ex-president civilly liable for sexually abusing journalist E. Jean Carroll at a Manhattan department store in 1996.
The Fox event, which Harris has not yet agreed to, will be held in the swing state of Pennsylvania and moderated by Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, according to Trump's late-night post. He said that "the rules will be similar to the rules of my debate with Sleepy Joe, who has been treated horribly by his party—BUT WITH A FULL ARENA AUDIENCE!"
Since embracing Biden's endorsement last month, Harris has taken aim at Trump for suggesting he would back out of the ABC debate. During a Tuesday campaign rally in Georgia, said: "Well Donald, I do hope you'll reconsider to meet me on the debate stage. Because as the saying goes, 'If you've got something to say, say it to my face.'"
After the Republican's Friday post, Harris campaign communications director Michael Tyler said in a statement that "Donald Trump is running scared and trying to back out of the debate he already agreed to and running straight to Fox News to bail him out."
"He needs to stop playing games and show up to the debate he already committed to on September 10," Tyler continued. "The vice president will be there one way or the other to take the opportunity to speak to a prime-time national audience."
"We're happy to discuss further debates after the one both campaigns have already agreed to," he added. "Mr. Anytime, anywhere, anyplace should have no problem with that unless he's too scared to show up on the 10th."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular