Richard J. Tofel writes:

As someone who practiced press law for more than twenty years, and served as a senior executive of news organizations for just as long, I was shocked by the decision of ABC News last week to pay $16 million to settle Donald Trump’s libel case over George Stephanopoulos’s This Week broadcast in March. The shock came, and still lingers, because I—and every experienced press lawyer not involved in the case with whom I have discussed it—considered the case one in which ABC was likely to eventually prevail.

The decision to settle has been greeted by a lot of commentary, but almost no reporting of new facts. Understandably, that’s generated a good deal of hand-wringing about corporations “bending a knee” or gloating about the humbling of legacy media or an arrogant press getting its comeuppance. But such speculation does little to explain what happened.

In fact, only ABC knows why it settled the case, and the most important thing the rest of us can do right now is to pose the questions on which it owes us answers. [Continue reading…]