CNN’s Jim Acosta and Brian Stelter Torch ABC Over ‘Disturbing’ $15 Million Trump Settlement: ‘Embarrassing’ Way to ‘Bend the Knee’
CNN’s Jim Acosta and Brian Stelter slammed ABC over its decision to reach a $15 million settlement with President-elect Donald Trump over George Stephanopoulos’s erroneous use of the word “rape” to describe a jury decision that found Trump liable for the sexual abuse of E. Jean Carroll.
“Brian, this-, I mean this is pretty unusual and disturbing. What do you make of all this and this ugly legal fight that is trying to be avoided by ABC and Disney?” asked Acosta to kick off the conversation.
“Right. Trump has a long history of filing lawsuits, including against news outlets. Most of the time, those cases get thrown out. Judges see right through those frivolous cases and throw them out,” answered Stelter before speculating that ABC may have decided to settle “because there might have been embarrassing emails or text messages on ABC servers that were going to become public.”
“So this might have been a case where ABC is avoiding public embarrassment by paying $15 million. But look, there’s a lot of people that say that payment is embarrassing as well. So this is not the end of the story,” he concluded.
The pair continued:
ACOSTA: I have to ask you whether or not you think there’s just going to be a chilling effect on the news industry as just as he [Trump] is coming into office because of this. I mean, I suppose it’s almost a rhetorical question because the answer is yes.
STELTER: The answer is yes. Media lawyers are worried about this, they’re preparing for it. They are preparing their newsrooms for it with the expectation of more lawsuits, more leak investigations, more subpoenas in the months and years to come. You know, there’s a great AP story about this this morning saying there’s a balancing act right now for the press between being fearful and just being prepared, doing our jobs, but being aware of the climate. And maybe that’s partly what ABC was doing here. ABC, as a source there said to me, “We needed this problem to go away.” They were trying to explain the payment that way. But now, as you said, $15 million for Trump’s future museum, I imagine there will be an ABC News Hall of Fake News. You know, there will be some attempt to troll as a result of this. And more seriously, we are in a climate where more of this kind of litigation is expected. And of course, it’s not just Trump suing news outlets. Trump himself is facing multiple defamation suits, multiple defamation lawsuits. So, you know, this turns in multiple directions, right? And what some see as accountability for mistakes on live television. others see as currying favor, a settlement to curry favor with the next president.
ACOSTA: Yeah, and I just wonder, Brian, what this is going to mean for news organizations, for tech companies. We’re going to talk about the implications for tech companies in a moment, but it seems to me that there’s a lot of this bending the knee going on. And I’m sure the folks over at ABC will say that that’s just not the case. But I just feel like that I-, I wonder how you feel about that aspect of all of this. I mean, to me, it seems this is a time for our industry to stand firm. And we’re going to have a very important job to do — and that’s not putting us on a pedestal or anything like that — but we have a very important job to do because Trump is not going to change his ways when he gets back in the Oval Office. He’s going to continue to say things that need to be fact checked. And you can’t have the news industry worrying about this sort of stuff when they’re just simply doing their jobs.
STELTER: Well, if some bend the knee, others have to stand up straighter. You know, the former Time Magazine editor Richard Stengel said this morning Trump has sued dozens of publications and media outlets in the past trying to, quote, “intimidate the press into self-censorship,” not to actually win any particular case. He did win in this case with a big payment. But that broader concern about self-censorship is one that I know many viewers and readers are worried about. And ultimately, Jim, as you know, we work for them. We work for the viewers, not for anybody else.
