In 1964 the Supreme Court decided New York Times v. Sullivan. Public figures could not recover defamation damages without proving actual media malice. As one might suspect, this essentially immunized the media, allowing them to say whatever they pleased about public figures like celebrities and politicians. That worked for a little while because the media generally wouldn’t run stories without at least two separate, credible confirming sources.

As Ernest Hemingway said about bankruptcy, the media gradually, and then suddenly, abandoned that standard. Now, anything goes as long as the target is Republican. Anonymous sources are more than enough to justify any story. The Rathergate standard of “false but accurate” reigns, and so does the “too good to check” standard. Journalists  accept anything that supports their biases and damages their political enemies. They don’t try to confirm what sources are telling them particularly if they know it’s false.

The media’s lack of ethics, and arrogance, reached a fever pitch during the Harris/Biden years as they not only collaborated with government to censor Normal Americans, but in return obtained the tacit assurance government wouldn’t do anything to enforce the law—any law—against them. Where Donald Trump was concerned, they went stark, raving mad and Trump began to strike back, filing multiple suits against them.

As time went by, even the Supreme Court began to realize they gave too much deference to the media in Sullivan. The more “conservative”—read “willing to decide based on the law and Constitution rather than political preference”—justices have expressed a desire to revisit Sullivan, which might mean a new standard forcing journalists to, once again, publish only the verifiable truth. The horror.

Such a case was recently settled by ABC:

ABC News will pay $15 million to a “presidential foundation and museum” in a settlement reached with President-elect Donald Trump in his defamation suit against the network and anchor George Stephanopoulos.

The settlement, which was filed publicly Saturday, reveals the network will also pay $1 million in Trump’s attorneys’ fees and will issue an apology.

ABC News will issue the following statement as an editor’s note on the online article at the center of the suit: “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.”

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The case revolves around Stephanopoulos’ repeated statements claiming Trump was found guilty of rape in a civil suit brought by E. Jean Carroll. A jury awarded her millions for battery and defamation and specifically told the judge there was no rape, which didn’t deter him:

A judge concluded in August 2023, when dismissing Trump’s countersuit against Carroll, that the claim Trump raped Carroll was “substantially true.” The judge wrote that Trump “raped” her in the broader sense of that word, as people generally understand it, though not as it is narrowly defined by New York state law.

Trump’s defamation? Largely denying the rape. He always denied he knew or had any contact with Carroll, whose claim was, to put it mildly, non-specific and fanciful.  This was surely pivotal in ABC’s settlement decision:

The transcript of the interview reveals that it got off to a shaky start on what precisely happened in the Carroll case. Stephanopoulos first said “judges in two juries have found [Trump] liable for rape,” which is a bit of a word salad, and brought up a second civil case in which Carroll later prevailed on allegations only that Trump had defamed her in denying her charge.

But after the first few minutes, things got clearer. Stephanopoulos said nine separate times that Trump was “found liable for rape.” He also used the word “rape” three other times, more cryptically. Mace pointed out five times that this occurred in a civil rather than criminal case, and Stephanopoulos twice noted this as well. Finally, six-plus minutes into the contentious conversation, Stephanopoulos pulled up a Washington Post story reporting on the trial judge’s July 2023 opinion. Its headline, displayed for eight seconds: “Judge clarifies: Yes, Trump was found to have raped E. Jean Carroll.” Stephanopoulos’s paraphrase of this: the judge said Trump was “found to have committed rape.”

Truth is an absolute defense in such matters, and what Stephanopoulos repeatedly said was false. Trump was not “found to have committed rape.” Still, it’s possible a jury could have found for ABC. So why did ABC settle?

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It’s not unusual to settle civil suits to save time, money and aggravation, but not for the millions at issue in this case. ABC probably settled because they didn’t want the full extent of their malice and corruption to come out in discovery, because they’re afraid of what Trump might do, and because they’re in ratings and financial trouble because damned few Americans trust the media. The best part is they did it to themselves.

It couldn’t have happened to worse people.

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Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.