The New York Times Building is seen on Tuesday in New York. President Donald Trump has filed a $15 billion defamation lawsuit against the newspaper and some of its reporters.
President Donald Trump’s latest move against media companies is a $15 billion lawsuit against the New York Times, alleging defamation.
It’s “par for the course” for Trump, as he has been focused on “driving [media companies] into bankruptcy or silencing them through intimidation,” said Jane Kirtley, a director of the University of Minnesota’s Silha Center for the Study of Media Ethics and Law.
At the same time, the lawsuit, which was filed late Monday, has one important difference from another high-profile suit by Trump against a different media giant, Paramount.
The Paramount suit – which the CBS parent company agreed to settle in early July with a payment of $16 million – was widely viewed as connected to Paramount’s effort to get the Trump administration’s OK for its merger with Skydance Media. That approval came in late July, allowing for a new entity, Paramount Skydance Corp. (PSKY)
Trump’s ability to withhold an OK “certainly was a factor in the CBS-Paramount matter, because they were concerned about whether their merger was going to be approved,” said Kirtley. With the Times, “I’m not sure that there’s something similar before the regulatory agencies,” she added.
Trump’s suit against Paramount was over what he viewed as selective editing of CBS News’s “60 Minutes” interview in October with Kamala Harris, who at that time was vice president and Trump’s Democratic opponent in the White House race. Paramount’s decision to settle was criticized by many press freedom groups.
“Sometimes, these multifaceted companies are not really focused on what I consider to be the mission of news, which is delivering information to the public that the public needs to hear,” Kirtley noted.
The New York Times is expected to put up more of a fight.
“Frankly, I would be very surprised if the New York Times does anything but mount a strong defense to this lawsuit,” Kirtley said. She said her “general sense of the lawsuit is that the vast majority of the speech that Trump is complaining about is protected by the First Amendment.”
Another expert had a similar reaction to Trump’s latest suit, which also targets four Times reporters and Penguin Random House, the publisher of a book written by two of the reporters.
“The complaint is full of bluster but short on any allegations of specific false statements of fact that would meet the rigorous standards for defamation claims brought by public figures,” said Katie Fallow, deputy litigation director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, in a statement. “Trump’s new lawsuit appears designed not to vindicate any genuine reputational harm, but to impose crushing legal costs on media organizations and create a chilling effect that will deter future critical coverage of Trump’s conduct and business dealings.”
In the 85-page suit, the president’s lawyers argue that a number of Times articles have been defamatory. The articles cited include one titled, “For Trump, a Lifetime of Scandals Heads Toward a Moment of Judgement,” and another quoting former Trump aide John Kelly titled, “As Election Nears, Kelly Warns Trump Would Rule Like a Dictator.”
Shares in the New York Times Co. (NYT) were down about 2% on Tuesday, while the broader S&P 500 SPX stock index was little changed. The company has a market value of about $10 billion.
A spokesman for the Times said Trump’s suit “lacks any legitimate legal claims and instead is an attempt to stifle and discourage independent reporting.” Trump said in a social-media post that the Times has “engaged in a decades long method of lying about your Favorite President (ME!), my family, business, the America First Movement, MAGA, and our Nation as a whole,” and he is “PROUD to hold this once respected ‘rag’ responsible.”
Trump’s legal actions against media companies have included a $10 billion lawsuit in mid-July against Dow Jones & Co., the publisher of the Wall Street Journal, that alleges defamation over an article about a birthday letter Trump reportedly sent to disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Dow Jones is also the publisher of MarketWatch.
In addition, the Trump administration is in a legal battle with the Associated Press over blocking the news agency from having full access to presidential events, in retaliation against the AP’s decision not to follow Trump’s executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
