Several major media companies targeted by litigation from President Trump and top administration officials are fighting back in court, signaling a new era of tension between the president and a press he and his allies view as overly hostile.
The trend stands in contrast to a string of high-profile settlements and capitulations made by major media companies during the first year of Trump’s second term and could be a sign that more outlets are now willing to devote time and resources to defending themselves in court from the president’s claims.
Trump, in his personal capacity, has sued The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the BBC within the last year, and several of his top Cabinet secretaries have either threatened to or filed litigation against other media organizations, including The Atlantic and MS NOW.
Many of these outlets have forcefully pushed back against what they describe as frivolous litigation designed to crack down on the independent press and intimidate journalists.
“I don’t know so much if it’s a shift in posture as it is these media organizations putting the administration to their burden of proving an actual malice standard, which is a really strong protection. So, watching them fight this is important,” said Lisa Zycherman, vice president of legal programs at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
“Governments can’t bring libel claims, so these sorts of lawsuits have really been against the norm, and that seems to have been majorly disrupted [in the Trump era],” Zycherman said.
Trump’s suit against the Times, arguably the highest profile of any against a media outlet, stems from its coverage of his reelection bid, which the president’s attorneys argue defamed him.
Observers have cited the case as part of a broader pressure campaign by the administration against the Times. Earlier this month, the Department of Justice (DOJ) subpoenaed Times reporters over the outlet’s stories on security issues surrounding a Qatari jet gifted to Trump to use as a new Air Force One.
After the Times pushed back against the subpoenas in court, the DOJ agreed to withdraw them.
Trump himself explained the administration wasn’t specifically after the journalists, but rather the source of the information they reported.
“We’re not after journalists. We’re after leakers,” he said in the Oval Office last week. “And the way you find them is through the journalists.”
“That person should be found, and the way you find them is to tell the journalist, if it’s something having to do with national security, you tell the journalist: ‘Who is it?’” he added.
Trump was also handed a separate legal defeat this past week in his lawsuit against the BBC, which he brought over the way it edited a story on a speech Trump gave just before the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
A judge in that case ruled the president had to produce financial documents from his trust to the BBC, paving the way for the outlet to make the president prove that the edit damaged him.
The Wall Street Journal, owned by conservative media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, also this week asked a federal judge to toss a defamation suit brought by Trump over its reporting on his ties to the late financier Jeffrey Epstein.
It all fits a new trend of media companies fighting back more forcefully against Trump’s legal claims, observers say, after some high-profile cases involving major broadcasters ended last year with the companies settling with Trump to end the litigation.
ABC paid the president more than $15 million to settle a defamation claim over false statements anchor George Stephanopoulos made on air, while CBS agreed to pay the president $16 million months later to quash a lawsuit he brought over the way it edited an interview with former Vice President Harris, which aired on “60 Minutes.”
In both cases, media critics at the time said the settlements would weaken press freedoms.
When CBS moved to settle its legal fight with Trump, its parent company, Paramount, was in the process of merging with Skydance Media, a conglomerate owned by Trump ally Larry Ellison, as part of a deal that required clearance from Trump administration regulators.
The Paramount-Skydance deal was given the green light after the settlement was paid.
The White House and Trump’s legal team declined to comment.
Mark Feldstein, the Richard Eaton Chair of Broadcast Journalism at the University of Maryland, argued that there’s a key difference in how television networks and print media have handled lawsuits by Trump.
“Television news has always been more timid than newspaper and magazine reporting and online reporting because it’s licensed by the federal government,” Feldstein said.
He suggested networks are more likely to settle because “the bigger expense was the unknown revenge of what Trump might do.”
Print and online media fight back, he said, because “their economics are a lot more precarious than broadcasters’ are. So, they can’t afford to pay these large multimillion-dollar settlements the way television networks can.”
The business and political realities are different today than during the early months of Trump’s second term, other voices say.
“Look, he has about two years left. And these big media companies can see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel,” one national republican strategist told The Hill this week. “These lawsuits are designed to modify publisher behavior, but it looks like many of them sort of see this as a bit of a paper tiger of sorts.”
Feldstein echoed the strategist’s sentiment.
“As Trump’s power wanes, whether that’s because his term is coming to an end or for whatever reason … there’s going to be less and less of this because this is strictly a response to power,” he said.
