ABC News pays Trump $15 million settlement. But don't expect media bias to end. | Opinion
ABC News and George Stephanopoulos apologized to Donald Trump and agreed to pay $15 million to settle a lawsuit filed because of false statements made about the president-elect.
ABC News settled a lawsuit over the weekend with President-elect Donald Trump.
In a surprising turn of events, the legacy news giant agreed to pay Trump $15 million (to go toward his presidential library) as well as to apologize for what anchor George Stephanopoulos said about the former president on his show.
Trump sued ABC News in March after Stephanopoulos alleged multiple times that Trump had been found “liable for rape” during an interview with South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace, a Republican, about her support for Trump.
The lawsuit alleged the comments were made with malice and disregard for the truth – two requirements necessary to prove defamation because Trump is a public figure. Our First Amendment gives broad protections to what is said about such figures, as it should.
Stephanopoulos’ allegations were related to the civil case involving writer E. Jean Carroll, in which a jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse – but not rape.
It’s an important distinction.
Trump even gets an apology from ABC News and Stephanopoulos
In addition to falsely accusing Trump of rape, Stephanopoulos didn’t look good in another important way in that interview with Mace.
Mace, a victim of rape, did not appreciate Stephanopoulos’ questions and said she found them “disgusting." She also said she believed that Stephanopoulos tried to shame her as a rape victim because of whom she supported for president.
Regardless, if ABC News had continued to fight the lawsuit, it’s likely the company could have won.
The legalities of what “rape” and “sexual abuse” mean in New York law are complex, and the judge in the Carroll case had further muddied the waters in explaining the verdict.
So given our tough free speech protections, Stephanopoulos’ comments – even though factually untrue – probably wouldn’t have met the high bar for defamation of a public figure like Trump.
All of that makes it extremely intriguing that ABC News opted to settle with the president-elect for such a sizable sum.
And apologize.
“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,” a network statement, added to ABC's original article, says.
The news media often hasn't been fair with Trump
Trump has angered a lot of people in the news business by calling the media “fake news” or the “enemy of the people.”
Yet, the news media frequently didn’t treat Trump with fairness or impartiality during his first term.
Regarding “Russian collusion,” COVID-19’s origins and Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop (to name a few examples), Trump’s comments and actions were often the target of negative news reports – even though it turned out he was right about many of these things.
To have a journalist of Stephanopoulos’ stature accuse Trump of being liable for rape on national television is reckless. I can’t tell you how many people have written to me, insisting falsely that Trump is a “rapist.” News organizations shouldn't contribute to the confusion.
The media, no matter how much they hate Trump, must prioritize accuracy and fairness when they report on the president.
I don’t want to put more weight on this settlement between Trump and ABC than it deserves, but I’m hopeful it signals a change in how at least some of the legacy news media will approach the president in his final term.
Ingrid Jacques is a columnist at Paste BN. Contact her at ijacques@usatoday.com or on X: @Ingrid_Jacques