Just days after Disney paid a $15 million settlement for ABC’s coverage of President-elect Donald Trump earlier this year, the likely incoming Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair issued the company another warning in a letter to Disney CEO Bob Iger. In it, he said he would monitor the network’s affiliate negotiations.
However, in the letter, first made public by CNN, likely FCC Chair Brendan Carr goes beyond the affiliate negotiations. He points to a $15 million settlement that ABC recently paid to Trump. Carr accused the network of adding to an “erosion in public trust” amongst the media.
On Dec. 14, ABC and its owner, Disney, issued a public apology alongside the settlement payment for statements made by anchor George Stephanopoulos.
Earlier this year, during an interview with Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., Stephanopoulos said a jury held the president-elect liable for raping columnist E. Jean Carroll in a civil court case in May 2023.
However, the jury noted, the specific offense was sexual abuse –– not rape, a distinction that exists under New York law.
In response to the coverage, Trump filed 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 even made the comment, Judge Lewis Kaplan, who presided over the case, clarified the issue.
He said the jury did find Trump committed rape in the way the act is publicly understood and that this was true 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.”
Nevertheless, Carr wrote to Iger that “Americans no longer trust the national news media to report fully, accurately and fairly.”
“ABC’s own conduct has certainly contributed to this erosion in public trust,” Carr added.
Trump and Carr are both signaling they will target the media more aggressively for alleged bias and inaccuracies.
Lawyers and advocates for press freedom say these suits are similar to those brought by politicians, celebrities and business leaders. The lawsuits, they say, have a purpose: waste time and money for news outlets.
In turn, advocates say the lawsuits make outlets question whether the legal risk outweighs the reward of publishing critical stories.
Meanwhile, Trump is also suing Iowa newspaper the Des Moines Register and pollster Ann Selzer. Selzer published a poll that did not accurately project Trump’s performance in 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 Trump disagree over whether he backed out of an opportunity to also appear on “60 Minutes.”
