'Open season': Experts slam Trump’s 'disgusting' lawsuit against Iowa newspaper and pollster

17 December 2024

On Tuesday, President-elect Donald Trump announced multiple lawsuits against media organizations, including one against the Des Moines Register and now-retired pollster Ann Selzer.

As Puck News' Tara Palmeri reported Monday night, the incoming president is arguing that Selzer's late October poll that incorrectly predicted Vice President Kamala Harris would eke out a narrow victory over Trump in the Hawkeye State amounted to election interference. Trump's lawyers are basing their argument on what Palmeri called an "extremely aggressive" interpretation of a consumer fraud law in Iowa that penalizes businesses from making misrepresentations to customers.

Trump is also suing the Pulitzer Prize board over its awards to New York Times and Washington Post journalists who reported on Trump-Russia developments during his first administration, and is continuing to seek $10 billion in damages from CBS News over its editing of 60 Minutes reporter Bill Whitaker's interview with Harris during the campaign cycle.

"As with Trump’s other recent and ongoing lawsuits against media organizations, the objective isn’t to win but rather to intimidate," Palmeri wrote. "Already, nervousness is spreading in the industry, with media companies preparing for litigation targeting journalists, including for charges like defamation or even violations of the Espionage Act."

News of the lawsuit prompted calls from various journalists, activists, commentators and legal experts on Bluesky. Writer and activist Amy Siskind referenced ABC News' recent decision to settle Trump's defamation lawsuit over anchor George Stephanopoulos' on-air assertion that Trump was found liable for "rape" rather than "sexual abuse" (even though Judge Lewis F. Kaplan stated that "sexual abuse" was essentially the same thing) as "emboldening" Trump to further go after his enemies in the media. She opined that the new lawsuit against the Register and Selzer in the wake of ABC News' settlement was "disgusting."

Former federal prosecutor Harry Litman warned that the lawsuit meant it was "open season" on journalists. In a post to his Substack newsletter, Litman warned that Trump had already "shifted the balance of power between the media and the presidency before even taking office."

"This is a significant and deeply troubling development, especially as Trump continues to erode other democratic norms that make it all the more important that the media perform its traditional function of reporting the facts and pushing back against abuses of power," Litman wrote.

Lawyer Adam Cohen posited that Trump's lawsuit wasn't just a salvo against the Register, but also against its parent company, Gannett, which owns USA TODAY and hundreds of affiliated newspapers. He added that Gannett's decision to not endorse a candidate in the 2024 race amounted to "obeying in advance," and wryly observed that it "didn't even help them" in the long run.

Jeff Jarvis, a journalism professor emeritus at City University of New York, posted to Bluesky that Trump's actions in the wake of the ABC News settlement should serve as a warning to media outlets across the United States as Trump prepares to enter the White House for a second term next month.

"If you act as his stenographer, #BrokenNews, and if you accede to his pressure, you are complicit in his totalitarianism," Jarvis wrote. "It begins."

"This is not a joke," journalist and author Keith Boykin skeeted (the term for posts on Bluesky). "He’s trying to intimidate the press with lawfare and threats of retaliation if they say or do anything he dislikes. Do not capitulate to his threats. Fight back."

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