ABC News Shows Why Corporate Media Won't Save Us

The corporations that own legacy media companies would rather cozy up to Trump than take him on

Donald Trump keeps racking up wins. With the notable exception of Matt Gaetz, all of his cabinet picks seem to be on a path to confirmation. Former frenemies like Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Tim Cook are bending the knee in the most publicly demeaning ways possible. President Biden has largely ceded the stage to Trump, allowing him to act as the de facto president months before assuming office. On Sunday, Trump may have gotten his most gratifying win to date. As Michael Sisak summarized in the Associated Press:

ABC News has agreed to pay $15 million toward Donald Trump’s presidential library to settle a defamation lawsuit over anchor George Stephanopoulos’ inaccurate on-air assertion that the president-elect had been found civilly liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll.

As part of the settlement made public Saturday, ABC News posted an editor’s note to its website expressing regret over Stephanopoulos’ statements during a March 10 segment on his “This Week” program. The network will also pay $1 million in legal fees to the law firm of Trump’s attorney, Alejandro Brito.

After a decade of screaming about the “fake news,” Trump was able to ABC News and its most prominent anchor to essentially publicly apologize for being “fake news.” Even more embarrassingly, the $15 million will be donated to Trump’s presidential library, so we now have a major journalism organization funding a monument to the most anti-press President in modern U.S. history.

ABC’s capitulation has clearly emboldened Trump. As Puck’s Tara Palmeri reported on Monday night:

Trump filed a lawsuit in Iowa District Court accusing the venerated pollster Ann Selzer and her polling company—as well as The Des Moines Register and its parent company, Gannett—of “brazen election interference” and consumer fraud over her November 2 poll showing Kamala Harris winning by three points in Iowa. As Trump lawyers Edward Paltzik and Des Moines-based attorney Alan R. Ostergren noted in the suit, “President Trump ultimately won Iowa by over thirteen points.”

All of this is very bad for press freedom. Much of the media business is struggling, and they don’t have the resources to fight legal battles with the bottomless pockets of the billionaire-funded MAGA movement. Because of ABC, more and more media organizations will pull their punches when it comes to Trump. Much has been written about the implications for journalism. I encourage you to read this piece from Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple.

From my perspective, the ABC News settlement speaks to the limits of seeing corporate media as defenders of democracy.

Why ABC News Settled

Most legal experts believe ABC News would have eventually won the case — had they forbearance to fight. According to the standard established in the landmark case New York Times v. Sullivan, Trump must establish that Stephanopoulos and ABC News acted with “actual malice.” In other words, they had to know the statements were false and acted with reckless disregard for the truth. Proving “actual malice” is incredibly difficult, so libel suits against journalists almost always fail.

There are two possible reasons that ABC News settled a case. Most experts believe they would have won. First, something would have come out in discovery that would have been very embarrassing to ABC or Stephanopoulos. Remember all the texts during the Dominion suit against Fox News?

The second and more likely reason is that Disney, ABC News’s parent company, did not have the stomach for a fight with a vengeful and corrupt president. Journalism is a small, shrinking part of Disney’s bottom line — so much so that CEO Bob Iger floated selling off the network a few years ago. As he showed in his first term, Trump is more than willing to put his thumb on the scale, even with putatively independent regulators to reward his friends and punish his enemies.

The media business is in a state of massive flux. Media conglomerates like Disney are in “deal mode” — looking to offload assets and merge with and acquire other companies. All of those transactions would need approval from Trump’s regulators. Staying on the incoming president’s good side is in their interest, and they aren’t going to sacrifice shareholder value for a declining asset like ABC News.

Legacy Media = Corporate Media

We got a preview of this dynamic when the Washington Post scrapped its endorsement of Kamala Harris. Washington Post Jeff Bezos is one of the richest people in the world. The Post, which reportedly lost $77 million last year, is barely pocket change for Bezos. With Amazon and his aerospace company, he has much bigger fish to fry with the Trump Administration. Bezos wanted to stay in Trump’s good graces, hence his $1 million gift to Trump’s inauguration.

It’s not just ABC and the Washington Post; CNN is owned by Warner Brothers/Discovery, another struggling media company potentially looking for a partner or buyer. NBC News is part of Comcast, and CBS News is owned by Paramount, a company whose recent purchase by Skydance will be subject to approval from Trump's regulators. Hedge funds owned most local newspapers and various businesses before Trump’s government.

At a time when journalism is mostly losing money for its corporate overlords, we should expect more examples of the First Amendment concerns being put second to the profit interests of corporations. This is an environment in which accountability journalism will die.

Independent Media Is Our Best Hope

If journalism's main rationale is to hold the powerful accountable, then corporate ownership of nearly all major legacy media organizations is an inherent contradiction. As the last few days have shown, reporting without fear or favor may be a nostalgic pipedream. Even when these media organizations report critically on Trump or big business, consumers are skeptical of their motives because of their corporate ownership.

Independent media is most likely to hold Trump accountable, even when that media has an acknowledged bias. I’m talking about outlets like ProPublica, Courtier News, Crooked Media (my employer), Zeteo, the Bulwark, and Judd Legum’s Popular Information. I'm also talking about online creators like Hasan Piker, Elizabeth Booker Houston, David Pakman, and Brian Tyler Cohen. These folks are not traditional journalists. They don’t do the same thing traditional journalists do, but they are the future of media — and are more likely to boldly advocate for our democracy.