LAUREN TAYLOR: Just days after Disney paid a $15 million settlement for its coverage on President-elect Donald Trump, the likely incoming FCC chair is issuing the company another warning, writing a letter to Disney CEO Bob Iger.
Brendan Carr, President-elect Trump’s pick to run the broadcast regulator, said he will be monitoring ABC’s ongoing negotiations with its local affiliate stations.
In the letter, first made public by CNN, Carr goes beyond the affiliate negotiations and points to a $15 million settlement ABC paid to President-elect Trump. The network and its owner Disney paid the settlement and issued an apology for statements by their anchor George Stephanopoulos.
Earlier this year, during an interview with Rep. Nancy Mace, Stephanopoulos said the president-elect was held liable for rape in a civil court case in May 2023.
However, the jury noted, the specific offense was sexual abuse – not rape – which is different under New York law. The president-elect responded with a defamation lawsuit.
“ABC News and George Stephanopoulos regret statements regarding President Donald J. Trump made during an interview by George Stephanopoulos with Rep. Nancy Mace on ABC’s ‘This Week’ on March 10, 2024,” the network and Stephanopoulos said in a statement released earlier this month.
In July 2023, before Stephanopoulos made the statement, a filing from Judge Lewis Kaplan, who presided over the case, clarified the jury found that Trump’s actions *did* find Trump committed rape in the way the act is publicly understood, even if his actions were sexual abuse by the letter of New York law.
“The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was “raped” within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump “raped” her as many people commonly understand the word “rape,” Kaplan wrote.
The judge added that “the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”
Carr wrote to Iger that “Americans no longer trust the national news media to report fully, accurately and fairly,” later adding that “ABC’s own conduct has certainly contributed to this erosion in public trust.”
Carr specifically cited the settlement ABC paid to settle the lawsuit about the comments Stephanopoulos made.
President-elect Trump and Carr are both signaling they will target media more aggressively for alleged bias and inaccuracies, particularly if they relate to the president-elect and his supporters.
Lawyers and advocates for press freedom say similar lawsuits brought by political figures, celebrities and business leaders have a purpose: to take up time and money for news outlets and make them question whether the risk of a lawsuit outweighs the reward of reporting critically on people in power.
President-elect Trump is also suing Iowa newspaper the Des Moines Register and pollster Ann Selzer, for publishing a poll that did not accurately project his performance in the state of Iowa in the November election.
He also filed a civil suit in October in Texas against CBS for airing an interview on “60 Minutes” with Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris. CBS and the president-elect disagree over whether the president backed out of an opportunity to also go on “60 Minutes” around the same time.
For Straight Arrow News, I’m Lauren Taylor.
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