As newsrooms learned that President Trump had filed another multibillion lawsuit against a major outlet to have provoked his scorn – this time his home town paper the New York Times – media executives again puzzled over his long-term aims in repeatedly deploying the law.
Different theories abound over the strategy, from creating a chilling effect on the media to feeding an anti-mainstream media sentiment among his most vigorous supporters. One firm conclusion, however, is that the tactic is here to stay.
“I don’t think this is the end of this treatment of the media,” said one executive at a major US news outlet. “We’ll see more.”
Such is the ferocity and readiness with which Trump has turned to legal action – this is now the fourth multibillion suit he has filed against separate media companies since his return to office – some executives have talked about the possibility of displaying some kind of united front, showing solidarity against Trump’s tactics.
The idea serves as a recognition that the media as a whole is facing unprecedented pressure from a president happy to upend the rules on how someone in his office deals with media criticism.
The case filed against the New York Times in Florida is sweeping in its claims and at times preposterous in its detail. It begins with the grand allegation that Trump has faced “persistent election interference from the legacy media, led most notoriously by the New York Times”. It goes on to specifically cite a book by two New York Times reporters, and three articles.
There are even passages that would seem more at home in a publicity release for Trump’s television work than a court case. “The Apprentice represented the cultural magnitude of President Trump’s singular brilliance, which captured the zeitgeist of our time,” one section reads. The New York Times has said the case “has no merit”.
Yet such cases are regarded by many as a form of presidential lawfare, designed to create a chilling effect on reporting and act as a warning to owners of media companies already operating in an era of business models under pressure.
“The lawsuit against the NYT is an alarming escalation, though not an unexpected one,” said Joel Simon, the director of the Journalism Protection Initiative at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at City University of New York (CUNY).
“Since Trump’s election and his promise to go after the media and seek retribution against his perceived enemies, I’ve met and spoken with many leaders at news organisations across the country, large and small. Everyone has talked about the possibility of legal action of this type and everyone is trying to prepare as best as they possibly can.
“I think we all recognise and understand that there is a broader campaign to degrade, intimidate and undermine the media as an independent and critical institution and that regardless of how this particular lawsuit plays out there will be more legal actions to come.”
It follows similar action against 60 Minutes – settled by its owner, Paramount, which was attempting to close a delicate merger at the time. ABC news was also sued – and its parent company, Disney, again opted to settle.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post, under the ownership of the Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, has been accused of appeasing Trump with a narrowing of its opinion pages and its refusal to endorse Kamala Harris.
Apart from a chilling effect, the legal suits are a vehicle through which Trump can also create content for a new network of podcasters and YouTubers who now populate the world of Maga media.
“It’s a dual strategy – one is to cow the mainstream media to some extent with legal cases, which we see in many other parts of the world,” said Nic Newman, a senior research associate at Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Oxford University. “The other is to bypass them.
“That bypassing is done by going on to podcasts of influencers who reach his base or that are going to be sympathetic. It’s a way of increasing the clarity of your message while reducing the criticism of it.”
Trump’s legal tactics range beyond news articles: he still has legal action filed against the Des Moines Register and the pollster Ann Selzer, for publishing a poll before the election that showed Harris in the lead. While the case itself has been described as weak, the potential chilling effect on the availability of independent data is clear.
While Trump may consider the suits against ABC and 60 Minutes as successes, the terms of the tactic may change once some cases actually reach the courts. Trump’s decision to sue The Wall Street Journal and its media mogul owner, Rupert Murdoch, over its report of his alleged lewd note to the late sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein, is expected in court soon. He denies being the author of the note.
That brings with it risks for the president himself, most notably in terms of the divulgence of information relevant to the case. No company has yet discovered how the president and his advisers will react when they have more to lose in the process.
Both Murdoch and the New York Times have the financial muscle – and political stomach – to see such cases through.
