{"id":16040,"date":"2025-01-10T12:58:37","date_gmt":"2025-01-10T12:58:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=16040"},"modified":"2025-01-10T12:58:49","modified_gmt":"2025-01-10T12:58:49","slug":"given-george-stephanopoulos-carelessness-abcs-defamation-settlement-with-trump-seems-prudent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=16040","title":{"rendered":"Given George Stephanopoulos’ Carelessness, ABC’s Defamation Settlement With Trump Seems Prudent"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

“In an interview<\/a> with Rep. Nancy Mace (R\u2013S.C.) on ABC’s This Week<\/em> last March, host George Stephanopoulos repeatedly and inaccurately asserted that Donald Trump, now the president-elect, had been “found liable for rape.” A week later, Trump sued<\/a> ABC and Stephanopoulos for defamation in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, noting that a jury had deemed Trump civilly liable for “sexual abuse,” not “rape.” Over the weekend, ABC News announced<\/a> that it had reached a $15 million settlement with Trump in the form of a contribution to Trump’s presidential library. ABC also agreed to cover $1 million in Trump’s legal expenses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The settlement is highly unusual in the annals of Trump’s many lawsuits<\/a> against news outlets, which typically feature claims with a much weaker legal and empirical basis. Some Trump critics explicitly or implicitly faulted<\/a> ABC for folding, saying its decision is apt to have a chilling impact on journalism. But any such threat can be mitigated by applying normal standards of journalistic care\u2014standards that Stephanopoulos conspicuously failed to uphold in this case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his interview with Mace, Stephanopoulos was talking about two cases involving the journalist E. Jean Carroll’s allegation that Trump sexually assaulted her in a department store dressing room in the mid-1990s. In one case, a New York jury last year concluded<\/a> that Carroll had proven, by a preponderance of the evidence, that Trump had “sexually abused” her. The jurors also agreed that Trump had defamed Carroll by calling her a liar and awarded her $5 million in damages. But they expressly concluded<\/a> that Carroll had failed to prove Trump had “raped” her.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/reason.com\/2024\/12\/16\/given-george-stephanopoulos-carelessness-abcs-defamation-settlement-with-trump-seems-prudent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“In an interview with Rep. Nancy Mace (R\u2013S.C.) on ABC’s This Week last March, host George Stephanopoulos repeatedly and inaccurately asserted that Donald Trump, now the president-elect, had been “found liable for rape.” A week later, Trump sued ABC and Stephanopoulos for defamation in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, noting that a jury had deemed Trump civilly liable for “sexual abuse,” not “rape.” Over the weekend, ABC News announced that it had reached a $15 million settlement with Trump in the form of a contribution to Trump’s presidential library. ABC also agreed to cover $1 million in Trump’s legal expenses.
\nThe settlement is highly unusual in the annals of Trump’s many lawsuits against news outlets, which typically feature claims with a much weaker legal and empirical basis. Some Trump critics explicitly or implicitly faulted ABC for folding, saying its decision is apt to have a chilling impact on journalism. But any such threat can be mitigated by applying normal standards of journalistic care\u2014standards that Stephanopoulos conspicuously failed to uphold in this case.<\/p>\n

In his interview with Mace, Stephanopoulos was talking about two cases involving the journalist E. Jean Carroll’s allegation that Trump sexually assaulted her in a department store dressing room in the mid-1990s. In one case, a New York jury last year concluded that Carroll had proven, by a preponderance of the evidence, that Trump had “sexually abused” her. The jurors also agreed that Trump had defamed Carroll by calling her a liar and awarded her $5 million in damages. But they expressly concluded that Carroll had failed to prove Trump had “raped” her.”<\/p>\n

https:\/\/reason.com\/2024\/12\/16\/given-george-stephanopoulos-carelessness-abcs-defamation-settlement-with-trump-seems-prudent\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[1104,864,431,660,221,971,875,2006,848,1619,136,1584,170],"class_list":["post-16040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-authoritarianism","tag-autocracy","tag-democracy","tag-dictatorship","tag-donald-trump","tag-free-press","tag-free-speech","tag-freedom-of-press","tag-freedom-of-speech","tag-lawsuit","tag-media","tag-speech","tag-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16040"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16040\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16042,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16040\/revisions\/16042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}