'Chilling effect': ABC News employees condemn network‘s 'surrender' to Trump

17 December 2024

Earlier this week, ABC News announced it was settling a defamation lawsuit filed by President-elect Donald Trump by writing him a $15 million check for his future presidential library (and another $1 million for legal fees).

Trump's lawsuit, which was filed earlier this year, accused the network of defamation after anchor George Stephanopoulos said on the air that Trump was found liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll, rather than for the actual verdict rendered by the jury of sexual abuse. Judge Lewis F. Kaplan maintained that while rape and sexual abuse were different terms, they were essentially the same thing as the public understands them.

But following the settlement, Rolling Stone's Asawin Suebsaeng and Nikki McCann Ramirez reported that several unnamed ABC News journalists are angry at their employer for rolling over for Trump without putting up a fight. Several anonymous sources confided to Rolling Stone that they feared the settlement would have a "chilling effect" on journalism as a whole.

“It is frightening,” one ABC reporter set to cover the incoming Trump administration said. “My fear is this sets a tone for the next four years and that the tone is: Do not upset the president... That’s not our job. I’m not the only person here who saw this as a big win for Donald Trump and a surrender [by ABC].”

Rolling Stone further reported that executives at the network were motivated to make the problem "go away" as quickly as possible. But the settlement may have emboldened Trump to pursue additional litigation against other news outlets: On Monday, Trump filed a lawsuit against the Des Moines Register and pollster J. Ann Selzer, arguing that a poll published in the final days of the election predicting Vice President Kamala Harris would win the state by three points was "election interference" (the poll proved to be an outlier as Trump won Iowa by double digits).

In her Substack newsletter The Present Age, journalist Parker Molloy cited former Buffalo News editor Margaret Sullivan's warning to all news outlets to never settle defamation cases. According to Sullivan, "settling would only encourage more people to sue," which invites more bullying of the news media by the rich and powerful.

"Sullivan cites historian Timothy Snyder's crucial insight about resisting autocracy: 'Do not obey in advance.' When institutions preemptively submit to potential autocrats, they teach those autocrats what they can get away with," Molloy wrote. "ABC News just gave Trump a blueprint for how to bend media organizations to his will."

Click here to read Rolling Stone's report in full.

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